Re-Origin of Species

Winner of RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers
Winner of CBC Poetry Prize
Shortlisted for the 2020 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Longlisted for the 2020 Pat Lowther Memorial Award

From hybrid bodies to shifting landscapes, Re-Origin of Species blurs the lines of the real. These poems journey through illness and altered states to position disability and madness as evolutionary traits; skilled adaptations aligned with ecological change.

A lyric contemplation of our relationship to the environment, this book looks at the interdependence of species. Weaving personal narratives with a study of the insect kingdom, it draws parallels between human illness, climate change, and the state of peril in the natural world.

AUTHOR

Alessandra Naccarato

ALESSANDRA NACCARATO, born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto), is the recipient of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award and the CBC Books Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and a graduate degree in Community Economic Development from Concordia University. Her debut poetry collection, Re-Origin of Species, was awarded the AICW Bressani Literary Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her creative nonfiction, Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene, was a bronze medal winner of the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Essay Category.

Reviews

“Re-Origin of Species is a riveting, ambitious book that delivers on its ambition. A litany of sorrows for the world as it is, and a prayer for the future.” —British Columbia Review

“Alessandra Naccarato’s Re-Origin of Species is masterfully crafted. The maturity of these poems is matched by the high-level operation of the themes they enact. Naccarato creates an ecosystem in which self, psyche, and external environment are understood as intrinsically inseparable. Each poem achieves that much sought-after combination of unexpected and inevitable, an indication of high-level functioning both in craft and creative thought. As comfortable in the darkness as in the light, this collection creates an honest beauty and imaginativeness that can’t help but strike a chord, or several.” —Gerald Lampert Memorial Award Jury Citation

“Despite lamenting how humans have imperiled the natural world through our actions, Re-Origin of Species does not romanticize nature as an idyllic thing. It is powerful and just as capable of causing pain and death, but it still feels like there is a qualitative difference.” —Canadian Literature