In this vibrant debut, Ellie Sawatzky rustles the underbrush of identity, seeking clarity on the nature of ownership and belonging. Haunted and inspired by old boyfriends, girls named Emily, ancestral ghosts, polar bears and mythic horses, None of This Belongs to Me plots a young woman's coming-of-age in a time of environmental and socio-economic peril. From rural Ontario to Kitsilano to Burning Man, Sawatzky inquires into childhood learning, girlhood learning, what is inherited, what is acquired, what begins to take form in the iridescent space between innocence and experience ("The body's crystal arithmetic"). Superimposing dreamscapes on realities, history on pop culture and everyday sorrows, this collection is a hymn for the broken-hearted, a plea for connection in the information age, and a call to question the ways in which we both nurture and harm one another and our environment. (From Nightwood Editions)

Ellie Sawatzky is a writer from Kenora, Ont., now based in Vancouver. None of This Belongs to Me is her debut poetry collection. She was a finalist for the 2019 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and has been published in The Fiddlehead, PRISM International, Best Canadian Poetry and many other publications.