The debut collection of New Brunswick poet Emily Davidson, Lift is an examination of how to be alive without being adrift. Loosely narrative, the collection spans two Canadian coasts, its speaker a transplant from Atlantic to Pacific. Lift asks questions of revellers at house parties, of ex-lovers, of classic films and grade-school dramas. Through careful observation, wry humour, and inquisitive uncertainty, Davidson charts her course through solitude and disconnection back to her roots and into the unknown. Comprising poems that are colloquial and elaborate, familiar and fresh, unshrinking and compassionate, Lift assembles a miscellany of what is borne away on the tide, and what comes back again. Lift carves a path through the world, into the heart, and arrives at last at home.
Praise for Lift
“Grounded as they are in place as being, the poems in Emily Davidson’s Lift cause the everyday to break and spill into wonder, longing and grief. Davidson writes in language ‘skinned and glistening,’ and it is in the pauses between words that she creates spaces ‘made tall enough for god to fit.’”
— Rhea Tregebov, author of All Souls’
“Whether on the West Coast or the East, Emily Davidson is an urban flaneuse. A persuasive new voice in Canadian poetry, Davidson compels us to walk and watch with her.”
— Anne Compton, Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry