Beckoning - by Hollie Adams (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How do you become your best self in what feels like the worst of worlds? Both probing and playful, the poems in this collection are interested in what it means to be a good person while trying to survive late capitalism. Is it our intentions or our actions which make us "good"? Is it enough to try to do better, or must our trying accomplish something? The speakers of these poems are often looking for better versions of themselves, imagining other selves within themselves, and seeking out alternate worlds in which they are themselves but new and improved.

Review Quotes

Fresh, playful, and delightfully strange, the poems in Beckoning are small rituals for our anxious age. Adams moves through myriad worlds--worlds where oranges beckon and kite and carp commune, where wonder persists alongside grief, and where delight remains possible. Attentive to both pleasure and bewilderment, this collection is a reckoning and a balm for the delicate world we live in.

On display in Beckoning is Adams' unique poetic lens, her distinctive mix of humour with tenderness, and her sharp critical eye. The poems in this collection balance a spirit of adventure and experiment with a frank, lyric mode that is both generous and unpretentious.

Hollie Adams is a genius at evoking the perilous ego-space where our Janus-faced appetites, dubious motives, and innocent confusion can put us, as we careen through adulthood on a crash course with our future selves. If you've ever been bitten by the virtual bear trap "they" have laid for your desires--and, standing in tears just feet away from the glossy, monied world of ideal homes and perfect sunsets, thought "it's all my fault"-- these poems will "get you" in the most satisfying way possible.

Hollie Adams' poetic debut spins your head in the best ways, beckoning you at once with the confessional and the comic, with the lush beauty and absurdities of language, with better and worse selves, with the scalp massager and the machete. Trust me, go.

About the Author

Hollie Adams, originally from Windsor, Ontario, now lives in Bangor, Maine, teaching Creative Writing and Canadian Literature at the University of Maine. She studied at the University of Windsor and holds a PhD in English from the University of Calgary. Hollie is the author of the novel Things You've Inherited from Your Mother (NeWest Press, 2015) and the short story collection Dear Humans (NeWest Press, 2026). She has served as the fiction editor of The Windsor Review and as Resident Artist at Acadia National Park. Her poetry and prose have been published in magazines and anthologies including Geist, The New Quarterly, Room, Carousel, Event, Contemporary Verse 2, Best Canadian Poetry, and Best Canadian Essays.