Author

Dan MacIsaac

Dan MacIsaac writes from Metchosin, BC. Recently, his work appeared in Event, FreeFall, Stand, and Canadian Literature. Brick Books published his poetry collection, Cries from the
Ark; and in 2022 Alfred Gustav published his chapbook, Jazz Sessions. His poetry has received awards including the Foley Prize from America Magazine. His work was short-listed for the Walrus Poetry Prize, The Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest, and the CBC Short Story Prize.

Interview with Dan

By Dan MacIsaac

Cries from the Ark

A pitch-perfect debut and a call to act in the service of Earth through radiant attention

Humankind, at present, has breached floodgates that have only been breached before in ancient stories of angry gods, or so far back on geologic and biological timelines as to seem more past than past. Against this catastrophic backdrop (at the end of consolations, at the high-water mark), and equipped with a periscopic eye and a sublime metaphorical reach, poet Dan MacIsaac has crowded his debut vessel with sloths and auks, mummified remains and bumbling explorers, German expressionists and Neolithic cave-painters.

With the predominant “I” of so many poetic debuts almost entirely absent, Cries from the Ark is catalogue and cartography of our common mortal — and moral — lot.

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“MacIsaac sings a raven’s work, sings the guts from our myths, sings our world with the breath that ‘for a century/ of centuries / only the wild grass / remembered.’ Present but acquainted with antiquity, MacIsaac’s instrument is our own breathing as we say these poems of reverence to ourselves/”

— Matt Rader

Selected Anthologies

Worth More Standing

In Worth More Standing: An Anthology of Tree Poems, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect our remaining ancient giants and restore wild spaces.

Sweet Water

Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds gathers the voices of poets from across Canada, the US and the UK who write of water.

Refugium

New poetry written by prize-winning BC poets, musicians, and artists such as Bruce Cockburn, Brian Brett and Lorna Crozier, anthologized by Victoria’s city poet-laureate.

Framed and Familiar

“Framed & Familiar: 101 Portraits: An International Anthology of Poetry and Photography “ (978-1-989786-72-7) is, in a broad sense, a collection of portrait photographs and portrait poems, from around the world,

Voicing Suicde

Voicing Suicide is a collection of poems about suicide and its impact on lives. The book arises out of a conviction that poetry offers an opportunity to understand some of the difficult aspects of suicide by allowing us to give it voice; through memory, and elegy, through an honest declaration of the draw of death.

Full Publication List