Harold Rhenisch's poems balance the settler and Indigenous experiences of land and water in the Pacific Northwest

A collection of shanties laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted in the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land's names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps.

Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the spirit of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch's work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe. (From University of Regina Press)

Harold Rhenisch is an editor, poet and fruit tree pruner from British Columbia's Okanagan Valley where he writes the blog Okanagan Okanagon. Rhenisch previously wrote The Tree Whisperer published in 2022. In 2013, he was the artist-in-residence at Klaustrid in East Iceland.

Rhenisch won the CBC Poetry Prize second place in 2007 for Catching a Snare Drum at the Fraser's Mouth and shortlisted in 2017 for Saying the Names Shanty. He also longlisted for the 2014 CBC Poetry Prize for The Art of Weaving. Most recently, he was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.