Mortal Arguments is Sue Sinclair’s second poetry collection. In it, she continues her extraordinary phenomenological investigation of lived experience, addressing with increasing urgency issues of profound philosophical and political importance such as consumerism, privilege, and our ability to respond to the suffering of others. Her voice combines great metaphorical brilliance with the depth one expects of a much older writer. Her poems will remind readers by turns of Rilke and Heine: urgent, sorrowing, ecstatic. This is an important book by one of Canada’s finest young poets.

Roses

Not because it is sufficient, but because we subsist on light, and what doesn’t cry out to be noticed? There’s something here you might recognize, but you’re not sure; still, you’re willing to risk it: the loss of everything, seen and unseen, the before and the after. It doesn’t depend on you but you move toward it. Because as long as there’s a moment here or there, why not arrange a few roses in a jar, give thought to their listlessness, how they gather the room about them yet think nothing of it, how each thorn persists, how they have made a purpose of holding still? Then you remember the necessary and sufficient. This isn’t it, but you don’t know where else to begin.

Sue Sinclair grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. Her extraordinary poetic powers were first recognized when she won two creative writing awards at University of New Brunswick: the Walker Prize and the Angela Ludvine Memorial Prize. Her first poetry collection, Secrets of Weather & Hope, was a finalist for the 2002 Gerald Lampert Award, and her second, Mortal Arguments, was a finalist for the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Her work appears frequently in magazines such as The Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, Grain, The New Quarterly, and The Malahat Review, and in anthologies such as Coastlines and Breathing Fire II.

Sue Sinclair's profile page

• Short-listed, Atlantic Poetry Prize
• Winner, Globe 100 title

The longer poems in Mortal Arguments ... are positively verdant, flowing with the lyrical sap of life. Yet, it is also here that Sinclair gives herself the room to stretch out philosophically and takes off, as though breaking into a run. …Sinclair’s shorter poems are often exquisite in their turn of phrase and imagery… It’s been years since I’ve been so pleased to read a poet I didn’t know beforehand. Sue Sinclair is a major talent, deserving a wide readership and critical attention…

Globe and Mail

This is an eloquent and jaw-droppingly graceful collection, a gem-like cluster of original and utterly convincing poems, a confident reminder of what truly good poetry can do.

Malahat Review