Book of Annotations

Finalist for the Archibald Lampman Award
Finalist for the Nelson Ball Prize

The debut collection from small press editor and publisher Cameron Anstee, Book of Annotations deploys a number of minimalist strategies-including erasure, found, lyric, haiku, one-line, one-word, concrete/visual, cento, restricted vocabularies, and lists-to question how small a poem can be made, and how can a small poem be made expansive? Engaging with contemporary and historical modes of minimalism, Book of Annotations is a dialogue in shorthand with work by H. D., Nelson Ball, Lorine Niedecker, Aram Saroyan, Phyllis Webb, Robert Lax, and dozens of others.

"Anstee’s debut collection of poetry is definitely worthy of all acknowledgements and eligible accolades."—Arc Poetry Magazine

“Wise and playful, the epigrammatic poems in Book of Annotations push past the limits of each word and into a space tense with imagination and truth. Not a word is wasted as Cameron Anstee demonstrates supreme control of space and minimalism.”—Archibald Lampman Award jury citation

Cameron Anstee lives and writes in Ottawa, where he runs Apt. 9 Press and holds a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature from the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins (Chaudiere Books, 2015).