The Elements

The Elements is a family book, a thinker's biography in poetry, and a polylingual homage, constructed on a double axis. Poems about and for Moure's late father accepting his dementia as a real way of thinking "world" and "self" in a struggle against invasive powers are braced alongside poems invoking the struggle of Galician peasants against the invasion of the armies of Napoleon.

It is a book about tenderness, and about The Good, in the face of destructions. By celebrating our ability to think and to revolt, it defends the human pull toward happiness and sovereignty, toward life, toward living. "The infinitely transmissible," it says, "demands this polyvalent body." (From House of Anansi)

• 20 works of Canadian poetry to check out in spring 2019
• Ern Moure on the elation (and stomachache) of poetry
• 11 Canadian poetry collections to check out during National Poetry Month

Other books by Ern Moure