Beach Books: Beach poet celebrates second collection

Beach writer Kateri Lanthier’s second collection of poetry, Siren, has just been published by Signal Editions, Vehicule Press.

The last time Beach Metro caught up with Lanthier was in 2013, when she won the Walrus Poetry Prize for “The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding Cup”, a love poem inspired by a small earthquake that shook Toronto the previous spring.

Since, the mother of three and UofT adjunct faculty member has won third prize in the London, England-based Troubadour International Poetry Prize and had numerous poems published in Canada and the US (Green Mountains Review, Hazlitt, Arc, Event, Matrix, The Fiddlehead).

Now, she is celebrating the launch of Siren, which details her search for what she calls “compelling melancholy” and deepens her connection to the ghazal, an ancient Persian form of love poetry that is at once dangerous, alluring, and delicate. Lanthier approaches her subject with a fair amount of wit and play. Take the opening stanza of the near-title track, “Sirens”: “I was the waif in the snowbank of the banquet hall parking lot. A voluptuous stray. A bravura drunk. My thoughts encrypted in sugar.”

Vehicule Press fetes Lanthier and Siren at the collection’s official launch at the Monarch Tavern on Clinton Street May 3, and in Montreal May 9.

But for those closer to home, Lanthier will be appearing at the Authors For Indies event at Book City in the Beach April 29, one of numerous events celebrating local authors across the city. Also appearing at the 1950 Queen St. E. bookstore April 29, according to the Authors for Indies website, are authors Ken McGoogan, Teri Vlassopoulos, Cathy Marie Buchanan, Lisa de Nikolits, Elan Mastai, and Terri Favro.

---