Join us on June 25th at 2:00pm at the little community garden at the corner of 6th and McPherson behind Buena Vista School, Saskatoon.
*If its raining, the launch will take place at J.S. Wood Library (1801 Lansdowne Ave, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan).
About the book: This chapbook contains a single long poem called Natural Selections. It is an eclogue spoken by a botanist character while wandering through a prairie landscape. The character’s musings cover a wide ground: the foreignness of names, the superiority of the natural over the artificial, the dangers of turning nature into fable, and the disaster of human intrusion. A few ironies develop naturally from the reader overhearing all this gathered into verse. The book was printed on a letterpress at Feast Studio + Press in Calgary. The poet hand-stitched the binding. And the artist Crystal Bossio contributes a botanical illustration. Shaun Lalonde is a poet living in Saskatoon.
Excerpt from Natural Selections:
“This frail flower bears a generic name
From the early botanist Theophrastus,
Author of The Characters and successor
Of Aristotle, though it grows wild
And native to these prairies. The laureled
Love rare designations. For my part
I’m partial to these overgrown moors
Beyond the train tracks and clattering garages
Where thrive beside the Clover and Thistle
Our purple specimen, abandoned and abundant
Beyond the city limits.”
-Shaun Lalonde