Leah Horlick

Leah Horlick (Vancouver)

“JackPine Press describes this gorgeous, hand-bound collection of poems from Adrienne Gruber as “a book that literally swings both ways”—how could you resist?

“Featuring mythic and magical blue pencil illustrations by Zachari Logan, Intertidal Zones is a collaboration between two queer prairie artists whose travels have taken them across oceans and back. Each poem plays matchmaker between the reader and menagerie of sea creatures, with titles like ‘Reasons to Choose the Octopus As Your Lover’ (eight tentacles, duh) — ‘and Reasons Not To.’ Gruber’s writing is shimmering, wet, and precise; she flawlessly transitions between sexy metaphor (‘I loved the anemone of her, that five-fingered pulsing dance’) and humour (the book’s epigraph is an apt and cheeky faux headline from The Onion). Intertidal Zones is an ethereal creature all on its own, worthy of an aquarium or a treasured spot on any queer collector’s shelf.”

Saskatoon-reared, Leah Horlick is a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, Riot Lung, was shortlisted for a 2013 ReLit Award and a Saskatchewan Book Award. Currently living on unceded Coast Salish Territories in Vancouver, she co-curates REVERB, a queer and anti-oppressive reading series. A poetry volume, For Your Own Good, is forthcoming in spring 2015.