The poems assembled in Orion Sweeping take nothing at face value. What are we to make of a radioactive souvenir, a shape-shifting dog, landscapes made strange by time? The speakers gathered here seek to set the record straight: a mink gives advice; a wolf disputes a rumour; a photographer zooms in on a kill; a military strategist gives lessons in peace. But the sum of the evidence is not bleak. A baby arrives as robustly as a whale; the solidarity of marriage is enacted in surprising ways; father and daughter share a gift for reprieve. Under the penetrating gaze of these poems, beauty and tenderness come quietly into view. (From Brick Books)

Anne Marie Todkill is an editor and poet from Ottawa. She has won Arc Poetry Magazine's Poem of the Year contest, was a recipient of Arc's Diana Brebner Prize and is a past winner of The Malahat Review's Creative Nonfiction Prize.