A baby transforms into a reverse mermaid in a baptism gone wrong. After being stepped on, a snail exacts revenge. In Danger Flower, Jaclyn Desforges leads enlightened witnesses through a wild garden where archetypal tales are treated with tongue-in-cheek irreverence. Amidst nesting dolls and opossums, poison oak and Tamagotchis, the poet navigates gender roles, sexual indiscretions, episodic depression, and mothering, forming essential survival strategies for a changing world. Danger Flower is a necessary debut.

Jaclyn Desforges is a Pushcart-nominated poet and the author of a picture book, Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020). She’s the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award, two 2019 Short Works Prizes, and the 2020 Hamilton Emerging Artist Award for Writing. Jaclyn’s work has been featured in Room Magazine, THIS Magazine, The Fiddlehead, The Puritan, Contemporary Verse 2 and others. Currently, she works on the editorial board of the Hamilton Review of Books as Poetry Reviews Editor, and is a creative writing MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her partner and daughter.

Jaclyn Desforges' profile page

“Juxtaposing layers of remembrances and haiku-like truths, “Homecoming” is a masterful touchstone of inhabitable depth. Rueful wit trades in melancholia as it plays carefully with the past, cradling all the fragile smallness that we’re born from.”

Juror Ed Clayton, Short Works Prize 2019