By the author of Light Falls Through You and the novel Canterbury Beach

In Loop, Anne Simpson explores the power, and the anguish, of many different modes of return – retrieval, revision, the covering of old ground with eyes wider and thoughts reconditioned by difficult wisdom. These poems occur at that place where a focused, compassionate vision comes to inhabit language and to find the forms that will suffice: a Möbius strip poem that loops back on itself; a crown of sonnets that take us back to the shock and grief of the twin towers and find deep resonance with paintings by Brueghel; a set of quick improvisations like the motion studies done for a drawing class. Simpson’s work shows us, again and again, the insight and excitement that come from the practice of a necessary craft in the service of a committed vision.

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WINNER - Griffin Poetry Prize
FINALIST 2003 - Governor General's Literary Award - Poetry

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Loop has much to do with the play of poetic forms, some of which are re-worked traditional forms, such as the corona (crown) of sonnets, or the villanelle, and some of which are invented forms: for instance, “Möbius Strip.” I find that playing with form allows me to play with ideas; it is because I can look at the world aslant by using an unusual form that I can often take hold of an idea in a unique way. These forms invariably loop back on themselves, as is the case with the corona of sonnets, in which the first line of the first sonnet becomes the last line of the last sonnet. In “Möbius Strip,” as well, there is a clear looping around to the beginning in terms of form. But it is more than that for me: it’s also a case of looping around, or circling around, an idea in order to examine it more fully, so it’s a bit like turning a stone around in the hand.

There are a number of poems in Loop that are deeply attentive to the natural world, and others that take a more political stance, but my concerns come together in that it seems necessary – indeed, more necessary of late – to witness the world in all its myriad possibilities. I suppose this opens out to include the possibility of the infinite in a long poem like “The Trailer Park,” which is, perhaps, a way of seeing a cosmos in a trailer park.

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“With its strong lyric voice and simple yet dynamic forms, Loop is a collection that draws you, and draws you in.”
–Quill & Quire

“Simpson’s lines ring lean and mature, and, like the late Bronwen Wallace, are full of people you know and people you don’t, but want to.”
–Elm Street

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League of Canadian Poets profile
Read an excerpt
Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia profile
Griffin Poetry Prize

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Anne Simpson is the author of three books of poetry, Light Falls Through You, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize; Loop, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; and, most recently, Quick. Her first novel, Canterbury Beach, was shortlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. In 1997 her short story “Dreaming Snow” shared the Journey Prize, and in 1999 she was awarded the Bliss Carman Poetry Award. Simpson lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she helped establish the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University.

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