Michelle Brown’s second book of poetry, Swans, begins as a night out between three best friends at an eponymous watering hole before becoming a phantasmagorical coming-of-age fable by closing time.
In between, memory shifts and poems shuffle like songs on a jukebox, detailing fraught female friendship, sexual awakening, alcohol abuse and abandon in the dying days of a decade of decadence.
Swans is a whip-smart collection from one of Canada’s catchiest lyric poets.
Michelle Brown’s work has been published in Maisonneuve, The Walrus, Malahat Review, Arc, CV2, Grain, Prism and The Puritan, amongst others. Shortlisted for Malahat Review’s Open Season award, the Relit awards, CV2’s Young Buck prize and the CBC poetry prize, she currently lives in Vancouver, BC.
Swans is her second collection with Palimpsest Press, following her debut Safe Words (2018.)
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