About this book
Print edition available at All Lit Up!
- Shortlisted for the 2014 Raymond Souster Award and the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award!
- Finalist for Best Cover/Jacket Design and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award at the 2014 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
Seldom Seen Road is a collection of sharply observed and understated poems about the land and its people, specifically those who have made it grow. Full of wit, insight, and fine bare bones imagery, they make up a book carefully constructed around a striking vision of the Prairies and its slowly disappearing history. Butler illuminates an oft-hidden world of strong women spanning two centuries, focusing perhaps the most powerful sequence of the book, “Lepidopterists”, on them.
These poems find their place in a tradition of prairie poetry that owes much to the work of such poets as John Newlove and Robert Kroetsch. Combining an exacting attention to detail with organic sensibilities, Seldom Seen Road will grow on you.
• Guest post at The 49th Shelf "Writing Your Way into Landscape"
• Read "Legend 1942" as part of the LPG's Cross-Country Poetry Tour 2013
• Hear sections from Seldom Seen Road read out loud on CKUA Artbeat
Reviews
"It’s as though she grounds herself specifically through these lost and fading touchstones, returning to each of them a strength and purpose simply for reaching out to them." full review
"These poems are almost drawn as much as written, in that their imagery is so strong, so precise, that one recognizes the deeply personal experience of nature with the universal experience of the seasons in this place." full review
"Throughout, Butler’s eyes and ears are committed to fine observation ... striking lines combine [an] aural muscularity with a delicately framed lyricism." full review
"The poems in Jenna Butler's Seldom Seen Road are a loving testament to the hard life the prairie demands of those who live there." full review
"This collection is easily absorbed, and its poetic strength is lasting."
