Readers of Alison Watt's beautiful non-fiction work The Last Island already know that her scientist's eye and poet's heart are well joined. Circadia offers poetry that explores some of the same territory - what it means to live embedded in the arrangements of the natural world. The biologist knows that few things are more poetic or awe-inspiring than these arrangements. Through this knowledge Watt finds the truer and deeper metaphors for the biggest puzzle of all: the human condition. With finely crafted language, she gives us an uncommon view - insights refracted through the double lens of the poet's eye and the scientist's heart.

Alison Watt's poetry has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Fire, Event, Sub-terrain, and Arc. She is also a painter who works and teaches out of her studio on Protection Island, near Nanaimo. Her first book, The Last Island: A Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island, won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction. Her book of poetry, Circadia, came out with Pedlar Press in 2005. Dazzle Patterns is her first novel. Both her painting and her writing reflect her background as a biologist and her ongoing preoccupation with the natural world, both as a backdrop to our unfolding lives and in its own aesthetics and intimacies.

Alison Watt's profile page

Beth Follett is the founder and publisher of Pedlar Press, a Canadian literary house. Her first novel, Tell it Slant (Coach House Books, 2001), a retelling of Djuna Barnes’s 1936 novel Nightwood, met with critical acclaim. Her poetry, prose and nonfiction work have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, and elsewhere. She lives in St John’s, NL.

Beth Follett's profile page