"I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch," writes Kayla Czaga in her third collection, Midway, an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. In her search for meaning in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, Czaga visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London's Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. Honest, elegiac, characteristically strange, and frequently funny, these poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak—both comforting and not. Along with the parents the poet mourns, this collection showcases a varied cast. A suburban father-in-law copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him. Midway is a welcome and necessary collection from one of the most celebrated and accomplished poets of her generation. (From House of Anansi Press)

Kayla Czaga is also the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On and Dunk Tank. Her debut won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, among others. Czaga was on the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize longlist for Drunk River. She lives in Victoria and served as the online poetry mentor for Simon Fraser University's The Writer's Studio.