While Supplies Last

Anita Lahey writes the kind of rigorously observed, emotionally charged poetry few can match. In While Supplies Last, her first collection in eleven years, Lahey throws herself on the mercy of a changing climate, takes refuge in art and revels in everyday wonders. In the final section, about a forest fire that devastated the Cape Breton village of Main-à-dieu in 1976, she becomes a custodian of local histories. No matter the subject, whether traffic reports during the pandemic, a fossilized baby mammoth, or Toronto’s iconic Don River, Lahey extends the sense of what language can do and say. This is tour de force writing: mischievous, unpredictable, urgent, never boring. In While Supplies Last, Lahey comes fully into her own.

Reviews

Praise for Anita Lahey:

“Her poems are vividly imagined, technically and formally astute, and stylistically rich.”—Poetryreviews.ca

“A poet whose commitment to chance and risk is as much verbal as emotional.”—Books in Canada

“In crisp, descriptive phrases, Lahey turns details of ordinary domesticity into vivid tableaux.” —Toronto Star

“Poems built on detail, colour, and texture; they’re supple and muscular, showing the tenderness inside toughness”—Susan Gillis