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ONE OF CBC's BEST CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS OF 2025
Something for the Dark centres Indigenous knowledge to probe the limits of what we know, confront the unknown, and reckon with our place in the world.
Randy Lundy’s newest collection of poetry—the final in a trilogy that began with Blackbird Song and continued with Field Notes for the Self—turns the poem to our relationships with the land, animals, and people, showing how our failures to see and live by the personhood of all other beings in the world, human and non-, leads inevitably to heartbreak.
As Lundy’s poems accumulate like snow on cedar, his recounting of experiences that transcend language invites the reader to bend their understanding and notice what was once unseen—how a red-winged blackbird clings to a swaying reed, how mist rises after rainfall, how dogs keen and howl, how fingers taste bitter after lighting sage, how hunger smarts, how liquor burns, and how the pain survivors carry is not merely their own.
— Jan Zwicky
"“With a Hanshan eye, Lundy sits on his deck and reports back the beautiful, ravaged face of the world. His gaze is ruthless and compassionate. He misses nothing.”"
— Tim Lilburn author of The Names
"“Such longing! ‘These days I wrestle no angels. I wrestle / with words. And no one is saved.’ writes Randy Lundy. In Something for the Dark, he presents tâpwêwina—truths drawn from the hand dealt and the life lived. ‘Nothing is hidden,’ he suggests, if we take the time to observe from a distance and wait in silence.”"
— Rita Bouvier, author of a beautiful rebellion