Slow War

• Slow Waris a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry

A century after the First World War, Benjamin Hertwig presents both the personal cost of war in poems such as Somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistanand Food Habits of Coyotes, as Determined by Examination of Stomach Contents,and the potential for healing in unlikely places in A Poem Is Not Guantnamo Bay.This collection provides no easy answers Hertwig looks at the war in Afghanistan with the unflinching gaze of a soldier and the sustained attention of a poet. In his accounting of warfare and its difficult aftermath on the homefront, the personal becomes political.

• Why Benjamin Hertwig sees parallels between pottery and poetry

While these poems inhabit both experimental and traditional forms, the breakdown of language channels a descent into violence and an ascent into a future that no longer feels certain, where history and trauma are forever intertwined. Hertwig reminds us that remembering war is a political act and that writing about war is a way we remember. (From McGill-Queen's University Press)

From the book

Explore theGovernor General's Literary Award for poetry finalists: