"This is poet's poetry, written with keen attention to inner harmonies and the see-saw of words. In an era of Instagram-driven micro-poetry, aka 'Like Poems,' all flimsy and whimsy, The Danger Model is an actual book crammed with actual poems. A vivid, fearless re-visiting of beloved free verse tropes, from dense, manic prose poems to singing, call-and-response, otherworldly hymns. A generous book, The Danger Model hardly feels like a first book. Rather the opposite – a collected works by a senior poet." Quebec Writers' Federation Concordia University First Book Prize jury

Madelaine Caritas Longman is a PhD candidate in interdisciplinary humanities at Concordia University. This is her first book.

Madelaine Caritas Longman's profile page

• Long-listed, Fred Cogswell Award
• Short-listed, The Concordia University First Book Prize

"The Danger Model is layered in perspective and vision, image and symbol, stillness and movement, light and darkness. Longman brings the modality of polarity into one pinpoint, shattering all convention at the same time. This work seems to breathe - has a life of its own - and is written by a brilliant new voice who embodies the thinking of 'the new way of being and seeing' with the soul of an ancient sage. You will see moments of your own life in these pages." Sheri-D Wilson, author of The Book of Sensations and Re:Zoom

"'At what point does a thought / become an illness,' infecting lover, self, and God with ghost-adversaries? It's Longman's meditation on this body of truth, 'letting in both birdsong / and rot,' that bears witness to one of the most epic poems of self-healing fidelity, in the face of paralyzing self-harm, I have ever read." Weyman Chan, author of Noise from the Laundry and Human Tissue

"These immersive, polyphonic poems document a self that doubts whether it is one. Though they are hard to live inside, I keep returning to them, exhilarated at the alchemy that transforms anguish into art. With a courage born of necessity and an urgent, searing beauty, Longman words the unwordable." Stephanie Bolster, author of A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth and White Stone

"The Danger Model forges a poetics of living inquiry. With a focused and curious gaze, Longman examines how language stretches emotional and physical realities and interrogates the fraught alchemy of existence. These poems shimmer with their own iridescent strength and vulnerability." Adèle Barclay, author of If I Were in a Cage I'd Reach Out for You