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 Magazine
“What the 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 won 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 is a novelist, poet, short story writer and essayist. Her latest novel, Stone Woman, (Guernica Editions) won the Book Excellence Award 2017 for Fiction. She is the recipient of the Matthew Ahern Memorial Award in literature at York University.“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 Shining Willow award
