With poems that both calm and awaken, Mary Barnes brings her Ojibwe roots to the fore and elegantly coaxes out the seemingly quiet world we often take for granted in What Fox Knew. In this masterful first collection, Barnes reveals this world anew, with tempered grace.
“A beautifully designed book housing a strong set of sometimes-furious, sometimes-shy poems, What Fox Knew is a well-rounded debut collection.”
– The Winnipeg Free Press
“What Fox Knew, is a fascinating journey. It is epic in scope, delightfully composed, and rich in detail.”
– Prairie Fire
“What Fox Knew is a beautiful collection of poems that lead us to reflect on the essential spaces of beauty, justice, love, home and nation. Barnes’ poems are, to quote her, ‘thick as resin’ and also gorgeously clear as amber in the light.”
– Juliane Okot Bitek, author of 100 Days, shortlisted for 2017 Pat Lowther Award and winner the 2017 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award for Poetry
“Mary Barnes’ poetry collection, What Fox Knew, is epic in scope, delightfully composed, and so rich in detail, reading it is a fascinating journey. Set in the Southern Georgian Bay area, the characters and their chronicles reveal a deep past of First Nations peoples which shapes the poet’s vision and her narrative. Barnes vividly layers existential questions and quests within her Ojibwa ancestry, drawn from family history and meditations on the human condition. Ranging from reflective to tragic, from witty to spiritual to sensual, the poems inhabit that volatile place between the public and the private, making the poems a must read for anyone contemplating the world we live in, and most of all the matters of the heart envisaged in this thoroughly engaging debut collection.”
– Bianca Lakoseljac, author of Stone Woman (Guernica Editions), winner of the 2017 Book Excellence Award for Fiction
“Mary Barnes is a fresh new voice in Canadian poetry. Her words flow with grace and certainty, creating images and evoking memories—some ancestral and others as familiar as home.”
– Judith Plaxton, author of Morning Star, nominated for a Shining Willow Award
“The kind of book you will want to keep on your bedside table as you will return to it again and again. Mary’s words envelop us and remind us that in the midst of hardship the human spirit can still be strong and connected to the earth. Within her poems there are many hearts, many voices singing us home.”
– Jónína Kirton
May 18th, 2023
Following her critically acclaimed first collection of poetry, What Fox Knew, poet Mary Barnesb sophomore collection, Moving Upstream reveals a tempered grace.
