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Leslie Vryenhoek's debut collection of poetry explores the nature of belonging in a transient culture. From its first assertion: "A neighborhood, no matter / how known, will not slip whole / into your knapsack," these poems insist home is a portable assemblage of minutiae: the taste of dirt, the solace of Home Depot, a pennant of bone.

 

Gulf loosely traces the author's journey from big-American-city suburb to small-town Canadian prairie to Newfoundland, a place where being from/coming-from-away still holds sway in everyday dialogue.

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Moving from solemn and meditative to saucy and irreverent, Gulf is a collision of natural elements and technology, native species and newcomers, the inevitable rending of families and the connective tissue of memory that ties us to place.

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Gulf was shortlisted for the national Gerald Lampert Award. 

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"This book has a charged intelligence. Like one of the questing figures in it,  it straddles the continent, articulating the gaps and disjunctions that create gulfs.... A beautiful debut." ~Mary Dalton

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A poet fully in charge of her craft, Vryenhoek ... her poems will find resonance with anyone who has ever felt uprooted. These are bittersweet poems, true on the tongue." ~ Patrick Warner

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Cover artwork: Flying West Across the Atlantic, One by Peter Wilkins