Art, children, marriage, breaking, rejoicing. Love is a many-branched tree and in Hamilton's newest poetry collection, her third, it's autumn or winter, the winds are kicking up and branches are flying everywhere - bursting into a thousand shapes. Or maybe it's Hamilton's heart that explodes into many dimensions. Tender, furious, grief-stricken, witty, urbane, elegiac, political, personal, erotic - these poems are all those things. Hamilton can't stop loving big no matter how chancy it is. All these shapes lend raw material for a poem: Mothers lose their babies. A boy loses his leg to war. A girl hides from serial killer Richard Speck. A virgin gets pregnant. A partner mourns a death at Walkerton. Women tumble into love, celebratory and foolhardy. Frank and elemental, love will burst into a thousand shapes reminds us that life is worth everything we can throw at it.

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the queer, non-binary, disabled author of nine books of creative non-fiction, memoir, fiction and poetry, including the 2016 novel Weekend, and two prior collections of short fiction. Their memoir was one of the UK Guardian’s Best Books of the Year and a Sunday Times bestseller. They are the two-time winner of Canada’s CBC Literary Award for fiction (2003/2014). They have had a Notable in BASS and three in BAE (2016/2018/2019) and have appeared in The Journey Prize, Best Canadian Short Stories and Best Canadian Poetry. They live near Vancouver, BC.

Jane Eaton Hamilton's profile page

"love will burst into a thousand shapes is jazzy and engaging. Hamilton proves herself to be a real wordsmith, with a trickster's soul and a heart as big as New Mexico. The poems are enlightening, risky, rough, funny as hell, and ultimately very moving."

--Barry Dempster

“Artful and globetrotting poetic exploration of matters of the heart runs the gamut. Yes, there’s excitement (“Tomorrow I will show you to everyone I love / and dream of marrying you”) and erotic highs (“she peeled me so I came apart / in sections juicy and dripping through her hands”). But there are plenty of end-of-romance lows too.”

–Brett Josef Grubisic, Xtra West

“The open-hearted poetry […] delighted me. Hamilton’s enthusiasm for life and language is infectious in this collection, which celebrates art, life and love […]Hamilton is a poet deserving of a larger US audience.”

–Julie R. Enszer, Lambda Literary