In these poems, Yvonne Blomer explores birds and their taming through language?the Blackbird as human soul, the Pelican as atonement, the Ostrich as cowardice, and the Raven as trickster, the nearest bird to God. She touches on mythology, biblical texts, and science to ask if poetry comes as close to damaging the wild things of the world as Audubon did in his collecting of birds to create the paintings. Mimesis, Plato argues, damages the soul, but Blomer asks: what does it do to the other creatures of the world?

Yvonne Blomer is the author of four poetry collections, including The Last Show on Earth, which was published with Caitlin Press in 2022, and As if a Raven (Palimpsest Press, 2015); in the fall of 2022 Palimpsest Press released Book of Places: 10th Anniversary Edition. Yvonne is the editor of the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press, 2017 and 2021). Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur (Palimpsest Press, 2017) is her travel memoir exploring body, time, and travel. Yvonne is the past Poet Laureate of Victoria, BC, and the past Artistic Director of the weekly reading series Planet Earth Poetry; Yvonne is Arc Poetry Magazine’s current poet-in-residence for 2022-2023. She lives on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) people in Victoria, BC. www.yvonneblomer.com

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