Unfinished Wilderness by Jason Heroux

Former Kingston Poet Laureate, Jason Heroux, has had published at least 20 collections of books and chapbooks, of which I believe I’ve read 10.

His newest poetry collection is Unfinished Wilderness. I had a privilege of reading an Advanced Reading Copy. The book is at comfort with the unresolved, the non-logical and with process of living taking precedence over moving forward. We are not limited to the personal memoir, with Heroux making as he goes, as writing is a form of terraforming futures.

Poets often invest in the hero notion of alone against the world while this emphasizes the interdependence of everything. The poem on p. 14, “One another”, shows the fruit of slow reflection. Notice the way the lines and stanzas break, building and breaking momentum and building in slowing pace that both excite and control speed in masterful turns:

A fire won’t burn
on its own, alphabets
need letters to exist,
a hand only feels
how cold it was
after holding
another hand.

There’s a humbleness and flattening together of people, animals and objects not holding humans as masters of the universe, the only species that matters, shown again on p. 16, “Heaven”: “Like a shadow warming under the sun,/ I have no idea how happy I am.”

The poet’s life, and human life, is de-centred. In a title that echoes’s Leonard Cohen’s blue raincoat, “Lines from a broken blue notebook”, Heroux writes in part, “Grey parachute of smoke, I hope/ your blown-out match lands safe” (p. 18).

In a way it’s an absurd, gentle, perhaps satirical image, but in a way the default cultural frame of violence, trauma and dominance is more absurd than wishing an object well. What matters, is everything. “We breathe/air, and look: we’re in the air being breathed” (p. 76). There is no Other. There is no Away. There is no latitude for old-century zero sum game anymore. There’s instead a position of lovingkindness that seems to inform rather than leading with ego.

The four sections of the book don’t follow one narrative arc but there are constants, such as a concern of how to understand literal and figurative darkness. How do we position ourselves to it? It is populated by city denizens of birds, puddles, street signs. (Is it my imagination that there are more lyric closure of end lines than in previous collections?)

While we read, we follow the mind that writes as it trains us (or we resist) to its pattern of perception, and its music. If one is to follow a path, echo a spirit, this one is marked by compassion and de-escalation, a sustainable nurturing of self yet no dullness or flatness. It’s a tricky act to follow or deconstruct to see how he makes his particular magic.

The title seems to spring out of the epigraph, “Striving to leave the wilderness/You become part of what’s wild. —Hsu Yun,” until the eponymous poem. It it he considers what is agency’s role on what home, self, and identity are in gentle but an uncommon angle of musing.

Want to further see how what he writes is almost painfully beautiful? An example, from p. 29, “I turned and felt as a leaf feels turning,/ stunned by the sudden farewell of it all, and wondered:/ Was I ever really home? I was and, somehow and somewhere,/ still am.”

His capacity for metaphor is worth the price of admission in “Cavity” alone. See an excerpt from it, from p. 32:

“The war was still at war, loss
ached in the heart’s jaw
like a cavity: grieving
bacteria recast candied joy
to acid, weakening the enamel
of ourselves.”

The freshness knocks me back on me heels. In it he finds the private space inside the body, the political events, and connects it to the universal experiences. The book is a marvel that deepens with rereads, revealing his underpinning assonance, tethering consonances, refrains of leaves. There is war and death yet makes peace without being pacifying.

What Heroux writes refuses to acquiescence to a lazy cynicism. Unfinished Wilderness is in line with his brand of surrealism. There’s the animation of the inanimate, the plaintive tenderness, the whimsy, the deep reaches, the compelling turns of phrase, balancing novelty and satisfying semblance of meaning.

His position might be exemplified by this quote by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “I want to trust the possibility of sweet spring perfume as much as I trust/the inevitability of frost.” Or perhaps, James Baldwin’s “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” It is our sacred duty to make what only we can make for those who didn’t know they were waiting for it.

Jason Heroux (he/him) lives in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife, Soheir, and their two cats, Pablo and Neruda. He is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines and Like a Trophy from the Sun, which was listed on CBC’s “44 Canadian poetry collections to watch for in fall 2024.” His short story collection, Survivors of the Hive (2023), also appeared on many “best” lists, including on The Miramichi Reader and 49th Shelf. Translated into French, Italian, and Arabic, Jason’s poetry has been featured in several anthologies, including Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets and Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, 2011, and 2016, as well as The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English. His poems have appeared in magazines and journals in Canada, the U.S, Belgium, France, and Italy. He was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022.

Publisher: Anvil Press (October 15, 2026)
Paperback: 5″ x 7″ | 80 pages
ISBN: 9781772142631

Pearl Pirie

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Pearl Pirie's latest is Heat Lamp (above/ground press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet