Winner of the 2002 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prizes)
Shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize
The 2002 Gerald Lampert Award for first book
Longlisted for the 2002 ReLit Awards.

Karen Solie takes risks with perception and language, risks that pay off in such startling ways that it's hard to believe this is a first book.

Short Haul Engine is one great twist of fate and fury after another. The writing is clear, striking and open to all sorts of possibilities. Even at their most playful, these poems dive much deeper than initially expected. There's a remarkably dark sense of humour at work here, but tempered with a haunting vulnerability that makes even the sharpest lines tremble.

from "Signs Taken for Wonders"
...Too delicate for these dog-days, small, clover-blonde, my sister sews indoors. I ask her to fashion me into something nice, ivory silk. I am a big girl, sunburnt skin like raw meat, sweating two pews in front of the Blessed Virgin...

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and, presently, an English teacher. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, ARC, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (Harbour, 1995), Hammer and Tongs (Smoking Lung, 1999) and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001) where her work is presented by Don McKay. One of her short stories is featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12. She currently lives in Victoria, BC.

Karen Solie's profile page

"There is toughness here, as well as grace. Often in her pages we encounter wisdom of a severity that we would almost rather not know. A cold person is a different species; there is a dismal companionship in grief, the water stays in the fish, even when the fish is out of water. Short Haul Engine is not just an exceptional debut, it is an exceptional book."
- from the Judge's Citation, Griffin Poetry Prize 2002

"Solie's voice is polished and original...An enviable, accomplished collection."
- Lynn Crosbie, The Globe and Mail

"Karen Solie's work reminds me that at the heart of metaphor there is a deep, amoral joy..."
Don McKay, Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry and Whiteside)

Solie's poetry shares a great deal with the work of her contemporaries; writers like George Murray, Ken Babstock, and Paul Vermeersch convey a similar sense of localism, of guarded confessionalism, and of the poem as a meditative narrative. Solie continues and expands their explorations of Canadian consciousness, not as a derivative follower but as a peer."
Jack Illingworth

"The language in this debut collection is spare and direct, blown clean of sentiment and nostalgia, like the prairie landscapes about which she writes. Perhaps it is partly because of her short, clean lines and simple forms that her poetry seems to drive toward a sense of vast, stark loneliness and restlessness that is, at the same time, beautiful"
- Heather Fitzgerald, Quill & Quire

Self reliant voice, lonely, wistful poems

by bookgaga