While Supplies Last by Anita Lahey

There’s just something about a strange collection of poems – ones that span the personal to a very niche topic – that draws me in. Dealing with trauma via traffic reports during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and telling the story of a wildfire in Cape Breton in 1976, Anita Lahey really does it all in this collection. While Supplies Last never feels disjointed, despite these very different threads in each section of the book.

The first section, “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” deals with the changing climate and climate grief, remembering how there used to be snow in “January Wasn’t For the Faint of Heart,” and berry picking in the city in “Saskatoon Berries by Value Village.” My little New Brunswick heart was warmed by the many references to Saint John, Fredericton and the Wolastoq (St. John) River throughout this collection. My bias is real, I admit! I love it when something references places I know well.

“Pandemic Traffic Reports,” the second section, is a series of poems detailing fake traffic reports, trying to make sense of the suddenly empty world in 2020. Lahey’s poems in this section are haunting, uncomfortably transporting us back to the scenes of recent trauma: empty streets and the ghosts of our previous hectic lives. Lahey travels through the repeats we made of this first fraught time, in the winter of 2021, where everything has vanished again; this time wearier and with more anger.

The final two sections of the collection are placed in Main-A-Dieu, a fishing village on Cape Breton. One section, “The Great Fire of Main-A-Dieu,” reconstructs the wildfire which swept through the village and destroyed 17 homes, borrowing from news clippings and Lahey’s own memories of hearing discussions of the fire at her grandmother’s house. The last section builds off of the preceding one, with more general poems about Main-A-Dieu, dipping into nostalgia for earlier days and memories of the village.

Lahey’s collection is odd in its composition, but it works beautifully. The poems are clever and evocative, and in her sections on Main-A-Dieu, shifts back to larger storytelling over a series of poems, which I find can be missing from many modern collections of poems. This is a dense collection, doing a lot with the poems inside, and is really quite strong. As the jacket copy proclaims, While Supplies Last is never boring.

Alison Manley

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary’s University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she’s adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.

Anita Lahey is the author of The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture and two poetry collections: Spinning Side Kick and Out to Dry in Cape Breton. An award-winning magazine journalist, her most recent book, The Last Goldfish: A True Tale of Friendship, was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award. Lahey serves as series editor of the annual anthology, Best Canadian Poetry. She lives in Ottawa with her family.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Signal Editions (April 5 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 125 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1550656228
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1550656220