White by George Elliott Clarke

The poems in George Elliott Clarke’s White riff on that colour’s cultural and poetic properties, joining Blue, Black, Red and Gold as the fifth volume in his long-running series of ‘colouring’ books. This substantial collection moves easily from topical poems written when Clarke was Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate through to the lush love poems, tributes and cinematic reflections on identity, history and place. While often pivoting on larger cultural subjects and stories—the deadly explosion at lake Lac-Mégantic, the global pandemic, or the insidious persistence of systemic injustice—at their core Clarke’s poems are unfailingly intimate, animated by great empathy and a passion for connection. This collection exclaims, over and over again: “Lookit!”