RECENTLY RECEIVED

Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo, edited by Sue Goyette. University of Regina Press, 2021

Sue Goyette's sensitive and uncompromising foreword is a necessary guide through this anthology of poems that take on, and take up, the subject of sexual assault and abuse. The presence of care and commitment, Goyette's and all the participants', is felt on every page.

Four sections track increasing intensity: Innocence/Exposure; Endurance/Persistence; Rage/Resistance; and arrive at an unsettled rest: Survival/Recovery. Variations of Renée Munn's arresting cover image, "Ophelia," make striking section markers.

Poems that open a world to me include Catherine Greenwood's "Black Plums," a chilling revision of the nursery rhyme about Little Jack Horner; Eleonore Schönmaier’s "Sixteen," in which two voices meet "on the narrow rocky trail;" Byrna Barclay's clear-eyed "Birdman," which watches an exterminator rid a balcony of pigeons and considers implications in his words; Cornelia Hoogland's astonishing "Woods Wolf Girl," from her collection of the same name, that rescues a mythic girl from symbol and restores her to painful actuality; Katherine Lawrence's shaping of words for no in "The No Variations;" Leah MacLean-Evans's unwavering "Name Me After a Fish;" Judith Krause's searing "Once."

Between the lists of acknowledgements and contributors is a list of national, provincial, and territorial resources for survivors.

I'm grateful for these voices and this activism.