Fierce, clear-eyed poems that confront head on the struggle to have faith in some kind of future in our complex, ecologically challenged world.

U ALIVE, Chelsea Coupal’s second poetry collection, documents the cusp between young adulthood and new motherhood, between being responsible for no one but yourself — and having the responsibility of a newborn generation in your arms. And with parenthood comes a sharp new awareness of mortality and its ubiquitous threat.

The collection tracks the past through its many collisions with the present, as the speaker moves between her new existence as a mother and the tumult of her life as a single person in her 20s. The poems deal with being pregnant in the pandemic, and giving birth — while being unable to dismiss or forget the wild parties and romantic misadventures that came before settling into a life in the city with a partner. The collection is structured around innovative “calendar” poems taking us through a full year, in which the author explores intersections and transitions between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, between the death of grandparents and the birth of the great grandchild they will not meet. Many poems are based on a deep connection with the life and land in rural Saskatchewan, the beauty of the brilliant yellow canola fields contrasting harshly with the sometimes toxic and disheartening realities of agribusiness.

These poems are honest, visceral, sensual, and alight with startling rhythmic cadences. The collection will appeal to millennial readers, especially women, new mothers, and women in Western Canada, as well as readers who know the Prairies well, or who grew up or live rurally, as well as younger fans of Canadian poetry.