Shortlisted for the 2016 ReLit Award

A razor-sharp eye for detail roams and redeems imperfections
both personal and collective.

The world in Carolyn Marie Souaid’s latest collection is both an act of the imagination and a responsibility. Souaid’s poems zoom in and out, shifting focus to accommodate varied dimensions of experience. We move from the breakdown of a relationship to primordial ooze to a suicide bomb to a son doing his math homework. In a disarmingly personable voice, Souaid investigates our darker moments, faces up to losses and failures both intimate and public, often with wry humour. If our world is an imperfect invention, it is also, for Souaid, a source of wonder— where “the trick was not to fall asleep but to notice everything / in its brevity.”

I’ve no idea what it is to be moss or jade
in the spectrum of green. There are no patterns;
there is no good light to measure anything by.
The laws of physics drop like an ax.

In the end, the body doesn’t keep.

—from “Where Night Takes Me”

Praise for This World We Invented:

“These bold, important poems have grappled with beauty and chosen honesty … [T]hey offer no easy consolations, but because they are made things … they reflect a hope for change.” —Stephanie Bolster