In Monoculture, Sue Goyette imagines that Nova Scotia’s last surviving stand of intact forest has been preserved for the enjoyment of the public–a premise that seems more like an inevitability than a speculation. Framing the text as visitors’ comments posted on the forest’s official website, Goyette speaks through a chorus of voices to explore the long consumptive, anthropocentric attitude that permeates our relationship with the natural world–from destructive harvesting practices to our expectations about outdoor recreation and leisure. This unique work takes its cue both from the incessant chatter of social media and from the long slog of a map-less hike, showing how a little scrap of wilderness can still unsettle and disorient us, humble and astonish us, and open its truths to us.

Sue Goyette has published nine books of poems and a novel. Her collections include The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl, Penelope and Ocean (for which she was awarded the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award). She is the editor of Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021), The 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology (Anansi, 2017) and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 (Tightrope Books, 2013). Her work has been translated into French, Spanish and German and has been featured in films, subways, buses, spraypainted on a sidewalk and tattooed. She was nominated for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Award and has won several national awards including the Pat Lowther Award, the Bliss Carman Award, and the CBC Literary Prize for Poetry. She is the Artist in Residence in the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba and Poet Laureate for Halifax Regional Municipality. She lives in Halifax (K'jipuktuk) where she teaches in the creative writing at Dalhousie University.

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