BOOKS
NONE OF THIS BELONGS TO ME
Nightwood Editions
October 16, 2021
From the publisher: In this vibrant debut, Ellie Sawatzky rustles the underbrush of identity, seeking clarity on the nature of ownership and belonging. Haunted and inspired by old boyfriends, girls named Emily, ancestral ghosts, polar bears and mythic horses, None of This Belongs to Me plots a young woman’s coming of age in a time of environmental and socio-economic peril. From rural Ontario to Kitsilano to Burning Man, Sawatzky inquires into childhood learning, girlhood learning, what is inherited, what is acquired, what begins to take form in the iridescent space between innocence and experience (“The body’s crystal arithmetic”). Superimposing dreamscapes on realities, history on pop culture and everyday sorrows, this collection is a hymn for the broken-hearted, a plea for connection in the information age, and a call to question the ways in which we both nurture and harm one another and our environment.
None of This Belongs to Me is pertinent now more than ever, as Sawatzky’s generation comes of age in a tumultuous time, forced to consider all of that which does not—and may never—belong to them. These poems invite readers to explore our inner and outer worlds, to question the ways we inhabit them, to infuse our modern lives with our potent histories.
WHERE TO FIND
Harbour Publishing | Nightwood Editions | Indigo | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop.org | Goodreads
Orders can also be placed with your
favourite indie bookstore.
Praise for NONE OF THIS BELONGS TO ME
“Despite the often dark overtones to some of the subject matter, Sawatzky’s poems retain a light and airy feeling on the page. Every word is measured and purposeful, the images building to a crescendo: “love leaves its trace, / lit up like a glowstick” (75). Sawatzky’s poems allow us access into these snapshots of moments in time, and her voice as a poet is as clear as the crystals that she describes sparkling on a bedside table.
—Andrea MacPherson, from “Lit Up Like a Glowstick”, Canadian Literature
“A new poet commands spontaneous attention. What never existed is suddenly, irrevocably secured between Ellie Sawatzky and reader because of the power of her work. This debut collection follows Sawatzky’s receipt of the CV2’s 2017 Young Buck Poetry Prize and finalist status in the 2019 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Vancouver.”
—Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews
"Loneliness is its own magic, the way the earth makes room." This book is shimmer, fire and parch, a fever dream of nostalgia and lament, like a startling tumble into a cold lake or the trance of sleeping too long in the sun. These poems thrum with the natural world and the uneasy fresh starts of womanhood "digressing in the rattler-happy crabgrass." Run to them.
—Nancy Lee, author of What Hurts Going Down
“A man floats by with a bouquet / of greyhounds”; “doctors windsurf between ice floes / sipping martinis from IV bags”; “a girl sees a man pee her name in the sand” and a woman “zoom(s) out / on the lithium-green Anthropocene,” only to find hope in a “post-Tinder codeine dream.” These poems surprise me in my favorite way. Line by line, they throw off sparks. They shed estranging light on a world I thought I knew, and cover vast landscapes in a line-break. In this searching and disarmingly intimate debut, Ellie Sawatzky waves a glowstick through the dark night of the soul.
—Suzanne Buffam, author of A Pillow Book
PRESS
A CBC Pick
to read for National Poetry Month
Read Local BC:
”What Trickles Down the Line”:
An Interview with Ellie Sawatzky for Poetry Month
Poetry in Transit
featured poet
Poetry is Not a Luxury Instagram
featured poem: “Sun Valley Lodge”
“Ellie Sawatzky’s lines are precise and coiled,
catching and unravelling like breath”
—Bronwen Wallace Award Jury Citation
Open Book Q&A:
"These Poems Attempt the Impossible"
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
