Bren Simmers’s Pivot Point is a lyrical account of a nine-day wilderness canoe trip through the Bowron Lakes canoe circuit in British Columbia. At the heart of the expedition are three young women, friends whose lives seem at risk of drifting apart as they approach middle age. While buoyed by the pleasures of adventure and camaraderie, and by a deep reverence for nature, Simmers finds herself struggling to inhabit the trip’s trickier elements–storms, insects, physical fatigue, conflict, doubt, and disorientation–and, as with the challenges and changes in her own life, to embrace them with confidence. Recounted in a journal-entry style with poems interleaving each day’s narrative, Pivot Point is a frank reflection on the roles friendship, mindfulness, and creativity play in the evolution of our lives.

Bren Simmers is the author of one previous book of poetry, Night Gears (Wolsak and Wynn, 2010). She is the winner of an Arc Poetry Magazine Poem of the Year Award, was a finalist for The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize and has been twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan, 2013). She currently lives in Squamish, BC.

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