Poetry
Death of Persephone: A Murder
2024, Caitlin Press
ISBN: 9781773861555
In Death of Persephone, the patriarchal myth of the maiden taken, raped, and made the potent and sexualized queen of the underworld is questioned, altered, flipped. Instead, we have Stephanie, a girl of seven, taken and raised by her Uncle H. who is obsessed by her, tries to control her, to keep her, to have her even as she blooms out from underneath him.
In poems both lyrical and narrative, a woman paints Hecate on a building, a Hyacinth Macaw flies overhead, a detective bumbles from crime to crime. This is a city with a vast underground where bats hang and paperwhites bloom, a city where men still rule.
Who sees what, who will pay, and who will survive in this ancient story altered at the core?
Read reviews for Death of Persephone here.
The Last Show on Earth
2022, Caitlin Press
ISBN: 9781773860770
In The Last Show on Earth, Yvonne Blomer gathers the diverse characters and distinct moments from everyday life, its tragedies, and triumphs, and begins to imagine them in a circus as side shows and exhibitions of the unusual. In her latest collection, Blomer borrows from museum dioramas, the paintings of Robert Bateman, and the animal portraits in National Geographic to question and explore the human element in the lives and survival of other species. In poems that are at times unflinchingly dark yet playful, Blomer balances on a tightrope of grief and hope as she traces the lines from motherhood and caring for aging parents to caring for our planet and its endangered creatures—the whale, the elephant, the wolf, the polar bear—as they face ongoing environmental destruction. The Last Show on Earth imagines us all as performers under the bright striped tent or packed on the circus train heading toward an unknown destination.
Read reviews for The Last Show on Earth here.
Book of Places
10th Anniversary Edition
2022, Palimsest Press
ISBN: 978-1-990293-33-7
In Book of Places, Yvonne Blomer invites us along for a cycling journey spanning across decades and countries. From a solitary traffic controller on a lonely Nevada highway, to the quizzical regulars of a dodgy pub in the UK, we follow Blomer’s meandering path through poetic snapshots of the figures and sights that populate it. This updated 10th anniversary edition also features an expanded collection of poems, integrating suites of meditations on childhood, and more recent poems reflecting on the ever-developing journey of life. The Book of Places invites us along for a grand adventure, but always leads us home.
Praise for Book of Places
Serious, playful, and governed by the eye’s apprehension of the familiar as well as the shockingly new, Yvonne Blomer’s Book of Places takes us cycling through Asian landscapes, Britain’s stone cathedrals, and the inimate landmarks of home, where these poems accumulate earthly wonders: rivers and rain, animals, leaves, bamboo’s hollow knock against stone. She drops the pebble of a word into a mirror pool, and its ripples expand into the still pond of the reader’s mind. —Pamela Porter, author of Likely Stories
As if a Raven
2014, Palimpsest Press
ISBN: 978-1926794198
As If a Raven is a series of complex portraits – drawing on myth, history and ornithological lore – that are free of poses and that have the force of real feeling. In these poems, Yvonne Blomer offers readers a fresh way of seeing the natural world.
Read a guest post by Yvonne at Canadian Poetries, where she discusses some of the inspiration behind the poem “Have You Been Hunting?”
The Book of Places
2012, Black Moss Press
ISBN: 978-0887534966
“Serious, playful, and governed by the eye’s apprehension of the familiar as well as the shockingly new, Yvonne Blomer’s Book of Places takes us cycling through Asian landscapes, Britain’s stone cathedrals, and the intimate landmarks of home, where these poems accumulate earthly wonders: rivers and rain, animals, leaves, bamboo’s hollow knock against stone. She drops the pebble of a word into a mirror pool, and its ripples expand into the still pond of the reader’s mind.”
— Pamela Porter, author of I’ll be Watching, Cathedral, and Governor General’s Award winner The Crazy Man
a broken mirror, fallen leaf
2006, Ekstasis Editions
ISBN: 978-1894800808
In this collection, Yvonne Blomer explores the experience of being a foreigner in Japan. In lyrical, imagist poems she vividly recreates moments in time and place, while reflecting on the nature of strangeness and familiarity — how that strangeness can itself be familiar, and the way we carry the places we love with us wherever we go.
Ravine, Mouse, a Bird’s Beak
2018, Nose in Book Publishing
Limited edition handbound chapbook
Visual art and poetry have a long history of contemplating the natural world and its ecology. When these two art forms come together, a conversation happens between what is painted, what is observed and the resulting ideas, images and emotions. Poetry is, as Rita Dove writes, “language at its most distilled and most powerful.” This distillation of language inspired by art is called ekphrastic poetry and allows the poet to inhabit, question, confront and speak to the art and its maker.
Ravine, Mouse, a Bird’s Beak was an exhibit in collaboration with Yvonne Blomer during her tenure as Victoria’s poet laureate. She responded to Robert Bateman’s paintings through a series of original poems. The Robert Bateman Centre opened up their collection to Yvonne in order to fully immerse her into the art of Robert Bateman and his unique view on the natural world. Displayed in unique ways, including audio recording, Yvonne’s poetry added new depth and meaning to Robert’s classic pieces.
Elegies for Earth
2017, Leaf Press
ISBN: 978-1-988811-03-1
Elegies for Earth was the winner in the Canadian Category in the 2017 Overleaf Chapbook Manuscript Competition.
Elegies for Earth is printed in a limited edition of thirty copies, all held by the author. Please click here to order.
These elegies are printed one side only on rice paper, each transparent page revealing the layers of text beneath. We think of the fragile nature of the earth's ecosystems, of the need to take care. The printing process was punishing to these delicate papers, marring some of them with silvery scars, further adding to the theme. The chapbooks are hand-stitched, with end papers of translucent indigo, for the ocean.
Bicycle Brand Journey
2012, Jack Pine Press
ISBN: 978-1-927035-02-3
Bicycle Brand Journey is a series of poems based on a cycling tour Yvonne and her husband took in Southeast Asia. The poems are inspired by the trip and the game of cribbage – a game they played on rainy days and in quiet villages. Ultimately, though, these are love poems. Poems that reflect on the connection between two cyclists and the world they cycle through; a world we all inhabit and influence as human beings. They are poems centered on humanity.
This project was a deep and direct collaboration as Regan took the poems and crafted visuals offering an entry point into each poem – a glimpse – while leaving space for individual interpretation. The cards, housed in hand-made folders, are digital reproductions of originals comprised of text and mixed media drawings. There are 14 poems in total – as if two people were playing cribbage, with a dummy hand, a card for the cut and a Joker. The gold dot paper recalls the pegging holes in a cribbage board. The cards can be arranged and rearranged for reading, just as a deck of cards can be shuffled.
Landscapes and Home
2011, Leaf Press
ISBN:978-1-926655-27-7
. . . Those elephants
knock down trees just to find solitude. Darkness.
Poems based on remembered and imagined memories of Africa and the west coast of Canada.
Landscapes and Home was shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize.