You laugh at the flip of cold water to the face, / thrown silver magics / in the gleam of the mast light.

In poems that celebrate being out at sea in all weather, the physical demands of the work, and the bonds forged in the face of shared challenges, Centre of the Compass Rose by acclaimed poet Zoë Landale draws readers into the experience of serving with a marine Search and Rescue crew on the coast of British Columbia.

At its heart, the collection affirms Landale’s lifelong connection to the sea, a relationship that began at seventeen when she became a commercial salmon fisher. Her poems bear witness to, observe, and revere the marine world while acknowledging the physical toll that a life on the water has taken on the poet’s body. Searching through seascape for transformation, Landale uncovers the sacred within the ordinary: an evening spent watching otters crack crabs, or the quiet radiance of a night on a Search and Rescue vessel, where “It’s astonishing / how much light the sky gifts the ocean with. / To the east, Vancouver lights push / colours of a Peace rose against / cloud bottoms: yellow, orange, a lick of pink.” Yet this beauty exists alongside knowledge of the natural world standing on the brink: the lack of seabirds; the threat of wildfire to the small island the poet calls home. The poems ask what it means to belong so completely to the BC coast and its seascape that their losses become one’s own.

Centre of the Compass Rose reminds us that beauty often arrives unexpectedly – moments of wonder emerge amid the rhythms of joy and grief, inseparable as tide and current.