Poetry
- Awards and Honours:
Winner, Fred Kerner Book Award
- Book Club Questions:
Suggested Book Club discussion questions for Endlings by Joanna Lilley
1. Describe this poetry collection in three words or fewer
2. Which poem(s) stuck with you the most? Why?
3. Within the context of the book, what does it mean to be a member of the human species in 2020? How has our understanding of our place in the world evolved over the past decade?
4. What emotions did you experience while reading this collection of poems?
5. What effect did the poet create for you, the reader, by including poems about both ancient and more recent extinctions in this collection?
6. How do you think the tone of the collection would have been affected if the book had been divided into two sections—ancient vs. recent extinctions—rather than having these poems intermixed as they currently are?
7.Some of the poems are not dedicated to one specific species (e.g., pages 66, 70-74, 96-101, 109). How does the tone of these poems differ from the others in the collection?
8. How does this collection address the current environmental crisis? Find examples in the book. What is the poet’s reaction towards this reality?
9. How does writing about extinct animals help living creatures?
10. Some of the poems speculate about using science and technology to revive some extinct species (e.g., “In Białowieża Forest,” “Necrofauna,” “Seven”). Do you think de-extinction is a good idea? Why or why not?
Winner, Fred Kerner Book Award
- Praise:
We are so disconnected from nature we think it’s the economy that makes our lifestyles and lives possible. In fact it’s the complex web of nature within which we are inextricably linked and on which we are utterly dependent.
When a species disappears, that complex web of life loses resilience and productivity. This book is a reminder of what we have lost within human memory. It’s a frightening reminder that Nature is our Mother and source of life.—David Suzuki
Endlings moved and changed me. Joanna Lilley’s clear vision and assured craft affirm that it’s too late for the passenger pigeon, nearly for the northern white rhinoceros, but not for the living and not for art. ‘Perhaps we can augment / our aptitude for wonder,’ Lilley ventures. In honouring the lost, these poems invite and sometimes command us to attend and to mourn. To embrace their wonder is to commit to living differently.
—Stephanie Bolster, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth
Endlings offers an untold history from the voices of extinct and extant animals. Watch as a boy shoots the last Labrador duck out of hunger, and cringe. Be condemned by the dodo and the ivory-billed woodpecker; condemned for the things that have died without us even knowing. Joanna Lilley gives the mythology of lost creatures and shows how myth can blind. Careful of what is underfoot, she reminds, it may be an endling.
—Yvonne Blomer, As if a Raven
- Awards and Honours:
- Winner of the 2021 Word Guild Award- General Market Non-Fiction - Specialty Book
- Shortlisted for the 2021 Word Guild Award - Best Book Cover Award
- Shortlisted for the 2021 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award
- Shortlisted for the 2022 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie
- Book Club Questions:
- The epigraph before the table of contents reads “a boat is not / the whole world / (the world / is mostly / sky).” Discuss the possible meaning(s) behind this statement.
- Of the three sections in the book, which resonated most with you? Why?
- In what ways did this collection challenge or confirm your understanding of “millennial culture”?
- Within the context of the book, what does it mean to be a woman in 2020?
- Which poems explore feelings of being dissociated or disconnected from the body and which poems take a more embodied stance? How (and where) is the body presented as a place of refuge, joy, and strength but also as a place of vulnerability and pain?
- How does this collection address the current environmental crisis? Find examples in the book. What is the speaker’s reaction towards this reality?
- What other forms of “loss” does the book explore, and how does the speaker handle them? Which one(s) resonated with you the most?
- The World Is Mostly Sky illustrates the empowerment that comes from being part of a strong community of women (i.e., sisters, parents, cousins, classmates, and friends). What relationships in your life give you this same sense of fulfillment and empowerment in the face of turmoil and crisis?
- The notion of “place” is very important in this collection; find examples that illustrate how “place” defines the speaker’s sense of self during her formative years. What are the places that defined you as a young person? Do these places still hold the same importance for you? How have they changed?
- What poem(s) stuck with you the most? Why?
[The poems in The World Is Mostly Sky] haunt. They ricochet. They pierce and shine.
- Praise:
In The World Is Mostly Sky, Sarah Ens bewitches us with broken robin eggs and belly button rings, silos and steeples, stones and stars. This stunning debut bursts with transfixing hosannas for an eerie coming of age—and with “purple-tongued” benedictions that sing the “in/breaking divine.” Ens’ poems have a contagious and fierce intensity, akin to an intimate conversation between the closest of friends. Her poems haunt. They ricochet. They pierce and shine.— Sandra Ridley, Silvija
Ens’ vibrating debut gnaws inside the dark vat of a prairie girl’s becoming. These poems are thorough, intimate, fiercely sensual processes, “tiny gnathic movements / digesting disaster.” In The World Is Mostly Sky, Ens takes the world by mouth, turning submerged matters into spit-back, unroofed, fully-lit desires. Throw away the old Hitchcock femme fatale script. Ens’ debut is “one true scream.” —Jennifer Still, Comma
These sharp, smart poems are embodied in the truest sense: of and faithful to the body. Whether she’s writing of girlhood or womanhood, of the prairies or the city, Ens’ vivid, forceful language fully engages and challenges her readers.— Rhea Tregebov, Rue des Rosiers
Turnstone Press Ltd.
206-100 Arthur Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
R3B 1H3
Follow Us
Quicklinks
