The poems in Shape Taking tend to the betwixt, beyond and out of bounds. They speak to living, dreaming and imagining in times of inner and global flux; seek connectivity in disparate things, and contend with the unreasonableness of miracle. They want to believe, with work, that the brain can change.

Elana Wolff has published six solo collections of poetry with Guernica Editions, including You Speak to Me in Trees, awarded the F.G. Bressani Prize for Poetry, and, most recently, Swoon, winner of the 2020 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry. She is also the author of Implicate Me, a collection of essays on contemporary poems; co-author with the late Malca Litovitz of Slow Dancing: Creativity and Illness (Duologue and Rengas); co-editor with Julie Roorda of Poet to Poet: Poems written to poets and the stories that inspired them; and co-translator with Menachem Wolff of Poems and Songs of Love by Georg by Mordechai Langer (from Hebrew), half of the joint volume, A Hunger Artist and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, translated by Thor Polson (from German). A bilingual edition of Elana’s selected poems, Helleborus and Alchémille (Éditions du Noroît) was awarded the 2014 John Glassco Prize for Translation (translator: Stéphanie Roesler). Elana has taught English for Academic Purposes at York University in Toronto and at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She currently divides her professional time between writing poetry and creative nonfiction, literary editing, and designing and facilitating social art courses.

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'How Alteration Works,' the title of the first poem in Elana Wolff’s startling new collection, Shape Taking, might well be the book's title in an alternate universe. Wolff has forged a unique poetic voice and eye, alert to the nuances and echoes of words, things seen, and emotions felt. She is increasingly experimenting with the forms of poems taking shape. They are unpredictable, but sure in their attention and melody, reminding us the world is equally full of surprises, so that 'even to ourselves / our tongues are foreign.' This is a bracing collection that will cleanse your poetic palate, and reawaken your curiosity about the world.

John Oughton, author of five poetry books, a mystery novel, and Higher Teaching