Steely, tender, and sensual, Lisa Baird’s When Whales Went Back to the Water creates a reverent container for a broken world. These poems are hymns to living in wonder through loss, joy, motherhood's sleepless nights, domestic violence, and isolation. Offering a courageous account of queer intimate partner violence, including the impacts of femme erasure in queer communities, this book is also grounded in the tastes and textures of a new parent’s everyday—keenly interested in our capacities during personal and global catastrophe amidst diaper changes and playground dramas. Haunted by hawks, coyotes, frogs, and forests, the collection also speaks to the power of the beyond-human sphere in the translation and transformation of pain and sorrow. Reaching beyond stories of survivorship to touch on personal and collective pain with tension, nuance, and care, Baird’s poems remind us that grief is inextricably intertwined with love and joy.

Lisa Baird (she/her) is a queer poet, essayist, parent, and community acupuncturist living in Thadinadonnih (“the place where they built") on the lands of the Attawandaron/Chonnonton people, and current treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, also known as Guelph, Ontario. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Room Magazine Poetry Contest and longlisted for the 2020 and 2023 CBC Poetry Prize. Baseline Press published her chapbook, Persephone’s Crickets, in 2024. Baird’s first poetry collection, Winter’s Cold Girls, was shortlisted for the 2020 Relit Award. Find her at www.lisabaird.ca and on Instagram @eramosageese.

Lisa Baird's profile page

"When Whales Went Back to the Water deftly moves between microscopic, geological, and intimate perspectives to show how we are 'animal[s] made of other animals'—and the grief and belonging that entails. Amidst housefires, environmental decline, domestic abuse, the word 'trauma' graffitied on a garbage bin, Baird conjures hard-earned awe." —Adèle Barclay, author of Renaissance Normcore

"What gorgeous magic Baird excavates from human circumstance. Rich with celebration, grief, and a touch of science, When Whales Went Back to the Water navigates a labyrinth of survivals. 'You will / grow to be a wild thing,' Baird promises. And isn’t that the gift we each most desire?" Jeanann Verlee, author of PREY and others

“When Whales Went Back to the Water sings and pushes language with its uncanny imagery, unexpected word choices and combinations, and play with spacing and breath. With its linguistic lifts, Baird’s collection shows the power of free verse to convey lyric beauty.” Jenna Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees