By turns darkly comic, emotionally connected, playful, incisive, lyrical and irreverent, Lake's poems navigate a harrowing personal and political terrain with understated, expansive wisdom. Lake persistently returns us to the search for love that lies at the core of relational trauma, even as she shows us how catastrophically such a search can be derailed.

This is a rare text able to hold the full velocity of a survivor's hurt and rage alongside a clear-eyed understanding of the extent and complexity of harm. In their honest accounting of a wide array of bad encounters, these poems point us, again, toward compassion, tenderness, and solidarity. (From Brick Books)

Horrible Dance is a finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The winner will be announced on Nov. 16, 2022.

Avery Lake is a writer living in Montreal.