Buoyancy Control

By Adrienne Gruber

Buoyancy Control, the latest collection of poems from Vancouverite Adrienne Gruber, explores themes of sexuality, sexual identity, and queerness, while confronting the feelings of loss and longing found in relationships, and the chance glimpse into a new life, while still recovering from a painfully failed connection.

Metaphors of oceans, lakes, and other bodies of water, as well as the creatures that inhabit those spaces, swim and swirl their way through Gruber's languid poems, which are divided into two evocative sections. Though distinguished by their own prologue poems, both sections reveal details of the narrator's examination of life, but from two different perspectives: Section 1, Terra Firma, is an exploration of place, of what we consider solid and secure, and how solidity can betray us. In contrast, Section 2, A mari usque ad maria, brings the reader into themes of water and the fluidity of identity, particularly sexual identity and queerness.

This is an honest, at times humorous, and revealing look inside the mind and body of a woman manoeuvring through experiences of longing, loss, and the fluidity of sexual identity, only to come out on the other side a more forgiving being from the journey.

Fans of Karen Solie's powerfully feminist and unapologetic poetic voice, as well as the playful sarcasm and grit of Alison Calder's Wolf Tree, will glory in Gruber's fascinating culmination of land and sea, mind and body, in Buoyancy Control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771662246

Adrienne Gruber

Adrienne Gruber is the author of three books of poetry, Q & A (Book*hug), Buoyancy Control (BookThug) and This is the Nightmare (Thistledown Press), and five chapbooks. She won The Antigonish Review's Great Blue Heron poetry contest in 2015, SubTerrain's Lush Triumphant poetry contest in 2017 and has been short-listed for the CBC Literary Awards, ARC?s Poem of the Year contest, Descant's Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem contest and Matrix Magazine's Lit POP poetry contest. In 2012, her chapbook, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Originally from Saskatoon, Adrienne lives in Vancouver with her partner and two daughters.