What If Red Ran Out

What if red ran out is the assured first collection from one of Canada's finest young poets. Provocative, funny, and brash, the poems in this collection leap from one surprising image to another, from poignancy to an outlandish, teasing delight. The sheer tonal range of Grubisic's poems is remarkable. They shimmer with playfulness yet deepen into contemplative gravity.

These street-smart poems register the pulse of contemporary commodity culture's off-kilter pacing; "the hyena at the bodega," as she calls it. They peer into back alleys of thought and bring forth our fears. But then, all at once, they race down the street again, laughing, reminding us of all we love and how we might hold onto it.

Katia Grubisic's poems and short stories, translations, and reviews have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the Globe and Mail, Books in Canada, Arc, the Antigonish Review, the Croatian Reader, CV2, ellipse, the Nashwaak Review, Grain Magazine, and Matrix. She is presently an editor for the New Quarterly and formerly a member of the editorial boards for Qwerty and the Fiddlehead. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and the Descant / Winston Collins Prize for poetry. She presently lives in Montreal.