In honour of poetry month, UWinnipeg’s James Scoles has launched his new collection of poetry, The Trailer. The collection takes his readers to the city’s outskirts — where everything moves just a little slower than the rest of the world and where all the beauty, joy, and humour of life can be found within four tin trailer walls.
The Trailer, book cover
The Trailer is on the CBC Books Canadian Poetry Collections list as one to read for spring 2021. The book’s titular poem won the 2013 CBC Poetry Prize, and Scoles has now added it to a different poetry collection he has been working on over the years.
“In the summer of 2019 when I was sitting in my trailer — The Trailer — that I finally realized the poem, and the place itself, needed, and deserved, a much bigger stage: its own collection,” said Scoles. “I loved the double-meaning of a ‘trailer’ and ‘lagging a little behind’ and then I had an epiphany: I’m just as much of a trailer as The Trailer.”
Scoles will join Lori Cayer and Caroline Wong with host Charlene Diehl for a live Facebook event on Wednesday, April 28th at 7:00 pm titled Voices in Verse: Spring 2021 Poetry Book Launch.
Scoles, an instructor in the Department of English with a BA, MA and MFA, teaches creative writing and literature courses. He has lived, traveled, and worked in more than 90 countries. His short stories are featured in Coming Attractions 13 (Oberon Press) and his writing has been nominated for The Journey Prize, The Pushcart Prize and both the Western and National Magazine Awards. When he is not teaching he helps run a small, 120-year-old family farm.
