Jenna Butler draws on her own experiences of her grandmother's disappearance into senile dementia to reassemble a sensual world in longpoem form that positively crackles with imagery and rhythm. Identities and memories flow and flicker as she strings together fragments of narrative into stories that comprise one woman's life. It entwines her disappearing life with that of the persona of the woman's granddaughter through a choreographed confusion of identities: of she's and I's. Few poets could execute this with convincing solemnity, while simultaneously recovering the dignity of the sufferer and her loved ones. Butler does. Poetry lovers, critics and scholars, and readers who crave a deft style charged with honest emotion should read Wells.

Wells (Robert Kroetsch Series)

Literature & Fiction

Butler, Jenna

Poetry

University of Alberta Press

"Windburned, eyes closed, this: beneath the keening of bergs, a deeper thresh of glaciers calving, creaking with sun. Sound of earth, her bones, wide russet bowl of hips splaying open. From these sere flanks, her desiccating body, what a sea change is born."From the endangered Canadian boreal forest to the environmentally threatened Svalbard archipelago off the coast of Norway, Jenna Butler takes us on a sea voyage that connects continents and traces the impacts of climate change on northern lands. With a conservationist, female gaze, she questions explorer narratives and the mythic draw of the polar North. As a woman who cannot have children, she writes out the internal friction of travelling in Svalbard during the fertile height of the Arctic summer. Blending travelogue and poetic meditation on place, Jenna Butler draws readers to the beauty and power of threatened landscapes, asking why some stories in recorded history are privileged while others speak only from beneath the surface. Wayfarer Series

Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard (Wayfarer)

The University of Alberta Press

Finalist: High Plain Book Award, Creative Nonfiction “This is not the story of a ready-made farm, complete with generations of history, carefully tended tools and sturdy clapboard farmhouse.” In 2006 Jenna Butler and her partner, Thomas, purchased “160 acres more or less” of rough northern bush. They knew they weren’t purchasing anything more than hard work and hope but still they headed up every weekend to clear a spot in those woods where they could plant their first crops. In this collection Butler talks of the hardships, humor and grace notes of trying to build a northern farm. From being driven out by mosquitoes to thwarting grasshoppers to sublime moments under a night sky, Jenna tells the story of how the farm has grown and changed over the years. While it has never quite become viable, it has pulled her always deeper into her love of the land. Jenna also talks about her reasons for starting a farm, poking fun at her own dyed-in-the-wool idealism. She explains her desire to protect and preserve the land, touching on the impact of climate change and of the wear and tear of trying to make a go of it as a small farmer. This is a beautifully written book, one that will leave readers wanting to start their own farm.

A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

University of Toronto Press

I hope you're okay in there, lovelies. I hope you're warm. After five years of working with bees on her farm in northern Alberta, Jenna Butler shares with the reader the rich experience of keeping hives. Starting with a rare bright day in late November as the bees are settling in for winter she takes us through a year in beekeeping on her small piece of the boreal forest. Weaving together her personal story with the practical aspects of running a farm she takes us into the worlds of honeybees and wild bees. She considers the twinned development of the canola and honey industries in Alberta and the impact of crop sprays, debates the impact of introduced flowers versus native flowers, the effect of colony collapse disorder and the protection of natural environments for wild bees. But this is also the story of women and bees and how beekeeping became Jenna Butler's personal survival story.

Revery: A Year of Bees

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Wolsak & Wynn

Exploring the landscapes of death and grief, this collection takes the reader through a series of essays, drawn together from twenty-four Canadian writers that reach across different ages, ethnicities and gender identities as they share their thoughts, struggles and journeys relating to death. Be it the meditation on the loss of a beloved dog who once solaced a departed parent, the tragic suicide of a stranger or the deep pain of losing a brother, Locations of Grief is defined by its range of essays exploring all the facets of mourning, and how the places in our lives can be irreversibly changed by the lingering presence of death.

Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography

Graham, Catherine

Parenting & Relationships

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Books by Butler, Jenna