Refabulations
Collected Longer Poems
The collected longer poems of brilliant Canadian poet Sharon Thesen
Refabulations collects and reanimates the longer and serial poems from Sharon Thesen’s œuvre, from her first book in 1980 to today. It is a record of a life in language, created by a dexterous and renegade poet whose mind is ever at work in the poem. A self-described “receiver,” Thesen energizes her decades of vital work by providing new neighbours and contexts for a body of poetry that has always recognized disaster, laughed at folly, and made its home in the vigour of the Now. Refabulations includes a short introductory essay by the editor, Erín Moure, an afterword-interview with the poet, and a bibliography.
Poet, editor, and teacher Sharon Thesen has spent almost all her life in British Columbia. Artemis Hates Romance, her first book of poetry in 1980, was followed by thirteen more, three of them finalists for the Governor General's Award: Confabulations (1984); The Beginning of the Long Dash (1987); and The Good Bacteria (2006). She edited The Vision Tree: Selected Poems by Phyllis Webb (Governor General’s Award, 1982), two editions of the The New Long Poem Anthology (1991 and 2001), and, with Ralph Maud, two volumes of correspondence between American poet Charles Olson and book-designer and Joyce scholar Frances Boldereff (1999 and 2012). The Receiver (2017) and The Wig-Maker (with Janet Gallant, 2021) are her most recent collections. She lives in the BC's Lake Country.
Erín Moure has published over fifty books: poetry, essays, memoir, as well as translations and co-translations of poetry from French, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, Portuñol and Ukrainian into English. Recent works are Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan, 2017), Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots (New Star, 2017), Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017),Uxío Novoneyra’s The Uplands: Book of the Courel and other poems (Veliz Books, 2020), Juan Gelman’s Sleepless Nights Under Capitalism (Eulalia Books, 2020), Chantal Neveu’s This Radiant Life (Book*hug, 2020), and Chus Pato’s The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021). She lives in Montréal.