Interrobang by Mary Dalton

Image | Book cover: Interrobang by Mary Dalton

Caption: Interrobang is a poetry collection by Mary Dalton. (Véhicule Press)

The spirit of the interrobang, a punctuation mark merging the questioning and the exclamatory, informs Mary Dalton's compelling investigations of home and identity in this, her sixth poetry collection—in extraordinary poems of aging; of despised plants once revered; of rites and sites of community abandoned. The "flared mouth" of Dalton's acclaimed musicality gives voice to lost souls and a lost sense of the earth. The collection's unique mix of bleakness and beauty is also reflected in various riddle and riddle-like series with their ambiguity, open-endedness, playfulness, and unexpected linguistic shifts. Interrobang movingly fuses notions of exploration —of glancing at things slant—with an emotional range that feels new and visionary. This is a steely, brilliant book from a major Canadian poet. (From Véhicule Press)
Mary Dalton's poetry collections include Merrybegot, Red Ledger, Hooking and Edge(external link). Dalton has won numerous awards, including the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award, and been shortlisted for various others, among them the Pat Lowther Award, the Atlantic Poetry Award, and the Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She lives in St. John's.