Sublunary

Reviews / Votes

"These poems are moving sublunary folk tales, a contemporary oral tradition of grief and wonder, surprise and bemused celebration. They speak of memory, the steadfast alchemy of self-awareness, of naming, of weaving a cloth of relations with the world and those one loves. They have the steady and certain strength of craft and curiosity. Life as we experience it is beautiful and strange, a painful and tender paradox. These are poems that see. We are seen." Gary Barwin, author of The Comedian's Book of the Dead "In Sublunary, themes in Richter's previous work, like memory, grief, and absence, re-emerge-this time woven in with references to mythology and Jewish folklore. Always present: the struggles of holding life's strangeness alongside its joyful and bewildering elements." Jonathan Rothman, Canadian Jewish News, December 2025 "In Sublunary, a collection as elegant as it is insightful, Richter answers the question, 'What rhymes with crow's feet, / girl's grit, owl's flight, crone's teeth?' A hard-won wisdom resounds through these bespoke lyric poems that glitter like crystal trees, nourished by roots of blood. While holding space to elegize what has been taken and lost, Richter never succumbs to easy bitterness, but remains open to wonder-'passionately attached to the world' and all 'its peculiar mouthfeel.''' Kayla Czaga, author of Midway "The prescription for Richter, it seems, is to make one's life fabulous, a fable, where the marvellous can bump up against the mundane in a poem, the surreal can be a way if not to escape ourselves, but to enlarge our one wild precious life.... there is an abundance of extraordinary images, word play and dare I say 'word magic' trying to push aside both the quotidian and the familiar, in such a way so we, as readers, might escape our own looping internal monologues and pressing responsibilities long enough to remember this life is a miracle, a fairytale of our own making, where family and fathers and poems help us navigate a difficult world, a world that rarely shows what is truly important, or extraordinary, or fabulous, on its surface. This is a terrific collection of poems..." Chris Banks, The Woodlot, April 9, 2026 [Full review at https://the-wood-lot.ca/2026/04/09/whatever-it-takes-a-review-of-lisa-richters-poetry-collection-sublunary-university-of-alberta-spring-2026/] "And the poems in Lisa Richter's third book, Sublunary, engage with all things under the moon: a human collection rooted in grief and renewal." 49th Shelf, February 11, 2026 "The prescription for Richter, it seems, is to make one's life fabulous, a fable, where the marvellous can bump up against the mundane in a poem, the surreal can be a way if not to escape ourselves, but to enlarge our one wild precious life.... there is an abundance of extraordinary images, word play and dare I say 'word magic' trying to push aside both the quotidian and the familiar, in such a way so we, as readers, might escape our own looping internal monologues and pressing responsibilities long enough to remember this life is a miracle, a fairytale of our own making, where family and fathers and poems help us navigate a difficult world, a world that rarely shows what is truly important, or extraordinary, or fabulous, on its surface. This is a terrific collection of poems..." Chris Banks, The Woodlot, April 9, 2026 [full review at https://the-wood-lot.ca/2026/04/09/whatever-it-takes-a-review-of-lisa-richters-poetry-collection-sublunary-university-of-alberta-spring-2026/)