In Book of Places, Yvonne Blomer draws us along for a cycling journey spanning 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 snapshots of the figures and sights that populate the world she moves through. This updated edition also features an expanded collection of poems, integrating a ghazal suite of meditations on childhood, place, and the concept of home, poems set on bicycles in Southeast Asia, and more recent poems reflecting on the ever-developing journey of life. The Book of Places invites us on a grand adventure, but ultimately leads us home.

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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