Nighthawks
Published on 19. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
116 pages
978-1-77212-855-0 (ISBN)
Description
In Nighthawks, Lisa Martin traces a creaturely interconnectedness, traversing land, ecology, and other boundaries amid crises unfolding at a global scale. These poems parse aspects of human embodiment-emotion, relationship, mortality-and reflect on how to live through moments of intense personal and political upheaval. Long verses about the remnants of marriage and divorce, and a sonnet cycle about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, sit alongside lyrical explorations of midlife loneliness, mothering, and grief. Philosophical ruminations on form and language are also present, asking what good is a poem, a verse, in a world so full of things one might hold an aversion to? "What if I write a line, follow it in, what if / the line tears what I didn't mean to open?" Martin's experimental collection engages in exquisite emotional truth-telling, asking how we can hold and tend the world with more attunement and care.
Reviews / Votes
"Lisa Martin's poems are written from the perspective of an 'expert / in worrying about the future,' imbuing Nighthawks with both consciousness and conscience, upping the emotional stakes of living in a 'storm coming, wind / alter[ed]' world." Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors "Lisa Martin articulates grief as one who has been long familiar with its company. The poems in Nighthawks pay exquisite attention to the furled inner world of grief as it opens again to the light." Jenna Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees # 5 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, March 8, 2026 # 10 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, March 15, 2026 # 10 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, March 22, 2026 # 1 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, April 5, 2026 # 8 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, April 26, 2026 # 3 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, May 10, 2026 # 10 on the Edmonton Poetry Bestseller List, May 17, 2026More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edmonton
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 148 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
417 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77212-855-0 (9781772128550)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lisa Martin is an award-winning poet and essayist. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, One Crow Sorrow and Believing is Not the Same as Being Saved, and a co-editor of How to Expect What You're Not Expecting: Stories of Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Loss. Her work has received the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, The Malahat Review's Open Season Award for Poetry, an Independent Publishers (IPPY) award, and a National Magazine Award for Personal Journalism. She was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize in 2018. Her most recent works are Creative Writing in Post-Secondary Education: Practice, Pedagogy, and Research, a blend of memoir and scholarly review, and A Story Can Be Told About Pain, her first novel. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at MacEwan University in Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory.
Content
I.
Synaesthetic
Two
Take Down
Ars Poetica
Poem at the Closing of a Door
Mid Life
The News
If You Really Aren't a Racist, Take This Online Test
Elegy
Typology
II.
The Point
Para-texts
When There Is No Remedy For It
Post-partum
Questions of Being
Feminist Philosophy
Left Breast with Lymph
Accommodation
Advanced Ethics for the Ex-Communicated
Anti-Anxiety (a Homeopathic)
III.
Beaverhill Lake
Notes on Arrivals and Departures
Bare Posts, Barbed Wire
Field Guide to the Birds of Alberta
Assertions of Likeness
Objects of the Marriage
A Song, or Call
Love
Verge
Nighthawks
Acknowledgements
Synaesthetic
Two
Take Down
Ars Poetica
Poem at the Closing of a Door
Mid Life
The News
If You Really Aren't a Racist, Take This Online Test
Elegy
Typology
II.
The Point
Para-texts
When There Is No Remedy For It
Post-partum
Questions of Being
Feminist Philosophy
Left Breast with Lymph
Accommodation
Advanced Ethics for the Ex-Communicated
Anti-Anxiety (a Homeopathic)
III.
Beaverhill Lake
Notes on Arrivals and Departures
Bare Posts, Barbed Wire
Field Guide to the Birds of Alberta
Assertions of Likeness
Objects of the Marriage
A Song, or Call
Love
Verge
Nighthawks
Acknowledgements