Heaven's Thieves

Winner 2017 Pat Lowther Memorial Award

Lyric poems built with consummate skill by a poet at the peak of her powers.

Heaven's Thieves is a collection engaged with the big questions — What are bodies for? What does it mean to be alive? What is beauty and why does it have such power over us? What is the point of art? — and the urgent ones — how to live in a shattered ecology, what to do about grief, illness, betrayal. Sinclair turns her attention to these questions with fearless curiosity, economy, and an originality born of her willingness to pursue her own line of inquiry to its limit. These poems get close and cut deep, mixing subject and object, surface and soul: "Red mud glistens / like cut fruit — or like the knife / that did the cutting, laid down."

Praise for Sue Sinclair:
"…a poet who looks long and hard at the world to draw existential meaning. Her studious gaze is insightful, even — dare I say it in this secular age — soulful." — Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star
"…vivid, lively, crisp, and packed with delicious surprise metaphors." — Anita Lahey, Arc Poetry Magazine