The award-winning poet and educator Matt Rader discusses his new collection of poetry Fine (Nightwood Editions, 2024), with Joseph Planta.

Fine by Matt Rader (Nightwood Editions, 2024). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Fine

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, British Columbia, at TheCommentary.ca.

Matt Rader joins me again. The award-winning poet and educator has a new collection out, Fine. It’s a collection that is largely set in the Kelowna area of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. And it’s set in recent times, over the summer of 2021 to June of 2022. It’s a time of the ongoing pandemic, there was the heat dome of June 2021, the atmospheric river of November 2021, the announcement of hundreds of unmarked residential school graves across Canada, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and more. I’ll ask Matt about the existential dread that seems to follow poems in this collection. I’ll ask about what the future might look like, and whether there might be hope for us, the planet, and even within Matt’s own sense of the present. There are poems in this collection that grapple with questions of disability, illness, trans identity, and healing, as well as Matt’s remarkable gift at looking closely at the world just outside our door. As he evokes the Okanagan Valley in poems in this collection, you feel as though you’re there even if you’ve never been there with the attentive wonderment that Matt displays in his work and life. Matt Rader is the author of six volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a book of nonfiction. His previous book Ghosthawk was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, where he joined me from three weeks ago. This new collection is from Nightwood Editions. Please welcome back to the Planta: On the Line program, Matt Rader; Professor Rader, good morning.

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