Karen Solie

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Karen Solie won the Canadian Griffin Prize with only her third collection, Pigeon, in 2010, and has quickly established herself as one of the most distinctive and unsettling voices in Canadian poetry, a 'sublime singer of existential bewilderment'. Her poems are X-rays of our delusions and mistaken perceptions, explorations of violence, bad luck, fate, creeping catastrophe, love, desire, and the eros of danger, constantly exposing the fragility of the basis of trust on which modern humanity relies. They are double-edged, tense and tender, an edgy blend of irony and guts, of snarl and praise, of sharp intelligence and quizzical ambiguity.

'Enormous credit goes to Bloodaxe for commissioning this exhilarating volume, Solie’s first book publication outside Canada...there is hardly a poem in The Living Option that I wouldn't cite with alacrity and delight.' - Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books

'The Canadian Karen Solie's The Living Option: Selected Poems has enormous wit and invention, making waste and horror seem almost redeemable...' - Sean O'Brien, Independent, Books of the Year

'Powerful, philosophical, intelligent… [Solie is] especially adept at pulling great wisdom from the ordinary…an ability to see at once into and through our daily struggle, often thwarted by our very selves, toward something like an honourable life' – Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie & Carl Phillips, 2010 Griffin Prize judges' citation, on Pigeon.

Karen Solie: The Living Option

Karen Solie reads six poems from The Living Option: Selected Poems: ‘Sturgeon’, ‘Early in Winter’, ‘Thrasher’, Tractor’, ‘The Road In Is Not the Same as the Road Out’ and ’Spiral’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed her during her visit to Newcastle to read for NCLA in October 2013. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: World Poets, filmed & edited by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2017).

Karen Solie's Griffin Prize reading

After the Griffin Prize judges' citation by Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie and Carl Phillips for her collection Pigeon, Karen Solie reads and introduces her poem 'Migration' at the 2010 Griffin Prize readings.

Karen Solie's Trillium Prize reading

Karen Solie reads from Pigeon in the Trillium 25th anniversary readings on 4 April 2012.