Gold Rush

By Claire Caldwell

• Top cities in which Claire has connections for events, media, etc.: Dawson City, Whitehorse, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles
• National festival pitches and reading series pitches
• National and regional media pitches to print, podcasts, online, and radio
• Digital ARCs available
• Reading club guide

• Language: English
• Publisher: Invisible Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781988784496

Claire Caldwell

Claire Caldwell is a writer from Toronto, where she acquires and edits children’s books for Annick Press. Claire was a 2016 writer in residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and the 2013 winner of The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. Her first book, Invasive Species, was named one of the top five poetry collections of 2014 by The National Post. She is a graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA program. Passionate about children’s creativity and literacy, Claire runs poetry workshops for kids across the city through organizations like Small Print Toronto. She is also a volunteer with IBBY Canada’s Readers and Refugees program.

Book preview

Gold Rush

Claire Caldwell

invisible-ebook

Invisible Publishing

Halifax & Prince Edward County

Text copyright © Claire Caldwell, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any method, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or, in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Gold rush / Claire Caldwell.

Names: Caldwell, Claire, 1988- author.

Description: Poems.

Identifiers:

Canadiana (print) 20190155906

Canadiana (ebook) 20200165739

ISBN 9781988784465 (softcover)

ISBN 9781988784496 (HTML)

Classification: LCC PS8605.A45685 G65 2020 | DDC C811/.6—dc23

Edited by Leigh Nash

Cover design by Megan Fildes

Invisible Publishing | Halifax & Prince Edward County

www.invisiblepublishing.com

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

For Stephen, my partner in the wilderness.

And for Moira, who is always up for an adventure.

Part One: Frontier Diaries

Shifter

It starts with the mammoth shin

in your parents’ garage, holed up in a lean-to

of cross-country skis. Then it’s the maybe-owl,

ptarmigrouse, mating call mistaken

for motorboat. Nothing

is what it used to be: the Gerber jar on the piano

filled not with spare buttons but prehistoric

horse teeth. You wobble

into bed on four woolly ankles.

Wake in the greenhouse, fists swollen

with chard. No one warned you

your body could feel like coming home

knowing strangers have been there.

Empty frame on the dresser,

bent fork in your underwear

drawer. But now you recognize a carnivore

slope in women’s shoulders, whiskers

stubbling