Niagara & Government

"To tell what happened to you is not a poem," writes Phil Hall in this, his latest collection, Niagara & Government. What a poem is: roaring calamity, wedding deceptions, sobriety, Charlottesville mobs, estranged sisters, folk art, poverty, puffery, work, names on cenotaphs, white space, white space, white space. These long sequential poems want to be spoken. They invite the reader to check her ego and sit with "the good stories that un-tongued us." (From Pedlar Press)

Phil Hall is a poet from Toronto. His 2011 collection Killdeer won the 2011 Governor General's Literary Award for the poetry and the 2012 Trillium Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize. His other collections include Trouble Sleeping, An Oak Hunch, The Small Nouns Crying Faith and Notes from Gethsemani.

• Phil Hall on literary house parties and his fantasy job
• 37 Canadian poetry collections to watch for in fall 2020

Interviews with Phil Hall

All in a Weekend Montreal3:10National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and CBC books is celebrating with some great new reading lists. On that list is Killdeer by Phil Hall. Phil Hall talks about some Canadian literary giants in his poem Becoming a Poet.

Other books by Phil Hall