Throughout the centuries, poetrys sublime subject has been nature. But not like this! Meghan Kemp-Gees second book, Nebulas, cements her unique position as a talented, original, multi-faceted mind using nature and science to understand human nature. Its dazzling. Every poem is unexpected. Shes always burned with a biological curiosity; in Nebulas she adds an astonishingly wide astronomical lens, tied always to home. Kemp-Gee pulls C. P. Snows Two Cultures humanities and science together into a rich and necessary whole. This poet gives us so much to think about, at a crucial time. We soar with her remarkable imagination. You wont get it, and then you will. Beautiful!' (Edit of Dr. Tara Cullis's blurb)
Nebulas inhabits with such erudite sensitivity the scalar and temporal perversities (or is it possibilities?) of pandemic still ongoing, never fully past. In this seemingly perpetual spacetime of risk and vulnerability, Kemp-Gee reminds us across the varied landscape of these formally restless poems the uneasy coexistence of human and non-human life, "collapsing homeward, deathward." I left these verses, which span "inverted echinoderm" to "asteroid," "feathers" to "cometary knots," mouth agape "to gasp and purr" with an awe about this world that can only be described as sublime. Travis Chi Wing Lau, author of What's Left is Tender
Throughout the centuries, poetrys sublime subject has been nature. But not like this! Meghan Kemp-Gees third book, Nebulas, cements her unique position as a talented, original, multi-faceted mind using nature and science to understand human nature. Its dazzling. Every poem is unexpected. Shes always burned with a biological curiosity; in Nebulas she adds an astonishingly wide astronomical lens, tied always to home. Tennyson predicted poets would one day walk hand in hand with the man of science: a century and a half later, Kemp-Gee pulls C.P. Snows Two Cultures together into that rich and necessary whole. This poet gives us so much to think about, at a crucial time. We soar with her remarkable imagination. You wont get it, and then you will. Beautiful! Dr. Tara Cullis, President, The David Suzuki Foundation.
Come follow Meghan Kemp-Gee on her kinetic tour from the forgotten edges of the universe into the soft heart of suburban Vancouver. Filled with startlingly vivid imagery, each poem is an electric meditation, whether pondering the Fishhead Nebula calling its Mom back, the gas station at the edge of town, Lions Gate Hospital across the street, or the sea creatures of Deep Cove. Starring an Atlantic giant pumpkin, constellations, strawberries, and Vancouvers SkyTrain and SeaBus, Nebulas is a study in how to whimsically render the ordinary. Populated with pipelines, climate change, ER wait times, long-haulers, and climbing gas prices, this haunting collection also grounds us in the new uncertainties of the 21 st century. For everyone who is barely holding on, let Nebulas guide you, if you also want to scream and scream. Catherine Lewis, author of Zipless
"It is abundantly clear that Kemp-Gee, like the speaker of Walt Whitmans When I heard the learnd astronomer, has lookd up in perfect silence at the stars. An impressively evocative collection of sparkling poems, interconnected by mythical and mundane motifs and catalogs of closely-examined minutiae, is the result. Allison M. Johnson, editor of The Left-Armed Corps: Writings by Amputee Civil War Veterans
In her latest book Nebulas, Meghan Kemp-Gee has shaped gorgeous words for the many "not-nothings" across lightyears of our universe. With the stars as her guide and a firm sense of home, these lustrous poems are love songs and longings and leaps of a marvelous imagination. Meghan Kemp-Gees Nebulas is a lush collection of star gazings, from Dolly Parton and Yo-Yo Ma to the Big Dipper and the Witch Head Nebula. And yet, these profound poems also make sense of the hospital across the street and the swimming cove a few miles way. Reading Nebulas, Im in awe. Every poem holds me in two places at once. Nebulas beautifully blends science and daily life into poems that contain multitudes, that magnify and amplify the points where the human-made and natural worlds overlap and spin. Here, Meghan Kemp-Gee peers through both microscope and telescope to find right-handed molecules and stars wearing pigeon feathers. She deftly invites us into her singular way of seeing near and far to discover the vast and fascinating somethings in between. Anna Leahy, author of If in Some Cataclysm
Praise for the author:
Kemp-Gee is a gifted satirist, whose wandering and wondering eye makes The Animal in the Room a fully unique book. Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
In The Animal in the Room, Meghan Kemp-Gee develops a poetics of the Anthropocene. . . this collection of poetry can be seen as a compendium of reflections on the age of human impact. Jane Frankish, The British Columbia Review
From wolves handing out resumés, to quiet observations on the feeding habits of deer ticks, throughout the collection we witness not only Kemp-Gees insightful use of animals as a way to explore human behaviour, but also the way our gaze towards animals can be turned inward. David Ly, Plenitude Magazine, on The Animal in the Room
Throughout The Animal in the Room, there are poems that sparkle with inventiveness and wit, as she composes a bestiary of sentences and syntax. Rob McLennan, Dusie
Meghan Kemp-Gee's writing is hypnotizing in its undoing of the boundaries of what it means to be a person, redefining emotions that are supposedly distinctly human. Collin Lu, Broken Pencil Magazine, on The Animal in the Room
