Books published by Coach House Books

WINNER OF THE HERITAGE TORONTO 2022 BOOK AWARDRich and diverse narratives of Indigenous Toronto, past and presentBeneath many major North American cities rests a deep foundation of Indigenous history that has been colonized, paved over, and, too often, silenced. Few of its current inhabitants know that Toronto has seen twelve thousand years of uninterrupted Indigenous presence and nationhood in this region, along with a vibrant culture and history that thrives to this day.With contributions by Indigenous Elders, scholars, journalists, artists, and historians, this unique anthology explores the poles of cultural continuity and settler colonialism that have come to define Toronto as a significant cultural hub and intersection that was also known as a Meeting Place long before European settlers arrived."This book is a reflection of endurance and a helpful corrective to settler fantasies. It tells a more balanced account of our communities, then and now. It offers the space for us to reclaim our ancestors' language and legacy, rewriting ourselves back into a landscape from which non Indigenous historians have worked hard to erase us. But we are there in the skyline and throughout the GTA, along the coast and in all directions." -- from the introduction by Hayden King

A warning, a movement, a collection borne of protest. In Watch Your Head, poems, stories, essays, and artwork sound the alarm on the present and future consequences of the climate emergency. Ice caps are melting, wildfires are raging, and species extinction is accelerating. Dire predictions about the climate emergency from scientists, Indigenous land and water defenders, and striking school children have mostly been ignored by the very institutions ‿ government, education, industry, and media ‿ with the power to do something about it. Writers and artists confront colonization, racism, and the social inequalities that are endemic to the climate crisis. Here the imagination amplifies and humanizes the science. These works are impassioned, desperate, hopeful, healing, transformative, and radical. This is a call to climate-justice action. Edited by Madhur Anand, Stephen Collis, Jennifer Dorner, Catherine Graham, Elena Johnson, Canisia Lubrin, Kim Mannix, Kathryn Mockler, June Pak, Sina Queyras, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Rasiqra Revulva, Yusuf Saadi, Sanchari Sur, and Jacqueline ValenciaProceeds will be donated to RAVEN and Climate Justice Toronto.

The definitive survey of an essential feminist poet.

A joy ride set on a crash course with the past.

A whimsical and misanthropic imagining of Emily Dickinson's life

A classic feminist novel for a new generation, resonating in a world of increasing radicalization.

bronchia thinkform a bombsightthink periosteum singingparticle falconry workpiecetwo lowcut hills seekingwhat stone isfor bodyis herdalliterationsNight & Ox is a long poem working its interruptions to a degree where it's broken by the will to live. A poem that invokes expansive loneliness, where the poet's emotional response is to endure. A crushed line of astral forms and anatomy in perpetual remove; it is a poem that nurtures vulnerability: some soft-footed embryo sounds against language’s viscera. Night & Ox possesses a feral minimalism for those too tired and too frantic with joy to cope with narrative.‘A fierce, ladderlike cri de cœur – at times a cri de cur – Night & Ox pulses with sawblade nocturnes that gnaw through the very rungs on which they’re wrung. One part Jabberwocky-talkie, one part fatherhood ode, the poem seeks a threshold, where the “mondayescent” gives way to ardour, splendour, even love. Scott is a cosmoglot of the throat’s ravine, and this is his manic, pandemonic article of faith.’ – Andrew ZawackiPraise for Blert:‘Scott takes us down to the basement of words, where sound and rhythm rule, and poets learn their craft. Blert is a strange and gorgeous work of linguistic materialism.' – Dennis Lee

A poem-by-poem revisioning and engagement with Sylvia Plath's Ariel and the towering mythology surrounding it.

Moving from the absurdity of the First World War to the chaos of today's cities, where men share beds, bottles of ouzo, and shade from willow trees, these poems ask questions: If your lover speaks in his sleep, how do you know "e;you"e; is you? Can you wake him to move his arm? What if you think of the perfect comeback to a six-year-old argument? Otter fails, with style, to find answers.Ben Ladouceur is a writer originally from Ottawa, now based in Toronto. His work has been featured in The Best Canadian Poetry 2013, and he was awarded the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013.

An unflinchingly subversive, aversive, conversive poetic look at the underbelly of Canadian settler-colonial experience.

Nothing slips by Brecken Hancock's deft ear as she seductively plumbs the depths of the evolution of bathing, doppelgangers, the Kraken, and the minutiae of family with all its tragic misgivings. The poems in Broom Broom pervert the rational, safe parts of the world to extoll and absorb the sweep of human history.What I mean to say is, the evidence is always there.From where we stand, we confuse lampposts for ghosts.Brecken Hancock's poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in several journals, including Event and Fiddlehead. She is reviews editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.

Cutting Room both describes and pushes against the anxious hum of the technologically saturated present. Sarah Pinder's poems navigate domestic and "e;natural"e; spaces as landscapes charged with possible violence and desire while they scan scenes as an outsider or camera eye to unsettle and fray familiar settings. Using hyper-focus and the long gaze, they draw the eye to the corners and seams of these spaces, slowing us down, shifting our focus to worn detail, asking us to seek pattern and possibility in a hyper-paced present tense. These are little ominous films, documenting the minutiae around us that can be our undoing.Let their ribs stretch out there is no figurewhich is not also a ground inits arctic plane. Cutting rooms as luckwould have it have academic sincerity.Sarah Pinder was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and lives in Toronto, Ontario. This is her first collection.

Winner of the 2013 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry (Manitoba Book Awards)If Lisa Robertson were to collide with David Lynch in a dark alley, the result would be a lot like The Politics of Knives. From shattered narratives to surrealistic fantasies, the poems in The Politics of Knives bridge that gap between the conventional and the experimental, combining the intellectual with the visceral. The complicity of language in violence, and the production of stories as both a defensive and offensive gesture, trouble the stability of these poetic sequences that dwell in the borderland between speaking and screaming.She made hyphens and made me use them.From her back she pulled brackets. Saying:"e;These in your throat and these around your neck."e;Jonathan Ball teaches English, film, and writing at two universities in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the author of Ex Machina and Clockfire, which was shortlisted for a Manitoba Book Award.