NearMiss Format: Paperback

Near Miss considers the relationship between close calls and the tenuous conditions of contemporary life. From actual cataclysms such as meteor collisions and volcanic eruptions to everyday failures and accidents, these inventive poems collide with the perpetual unease created by life’s unpredictability while contemplating mortality, fragility, gratitude and hopefulness.

... When the Emergency Broadcast

System proclaims this is only a test, you

leave the TV on because you’ve gotten

used to the sound. You keep waiting

for the heat to come on, for the regular

broadcast to resume, for a new sensation

to quicken inside you like the sight

of that fleet of ghost-planes lifted

from the desert, reanimated, hovering

over your house as if everything is fine.

― “Decommissioned Planes”

Laura Matwichuk’s poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada and the US, including Arc, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, The Burnside Review, PRISM international, Vallum and Best Canadian Poetry in English. She was a finalist for the 2013 RBCBronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Near Miss is her first collection of poetry. She lives in Vancouver, BC.