Unmet
Published on 2. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
104 pages
978-1-77196-657-3 (ISBN)
Description
A Finalist for the 2025 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren't caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET is a poetry collection that explores themes of frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Tony Hoagland and Diane Seuss, roberts's musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what could be, negotiating the past without losing hope for the future.
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren't caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET is a poetry collection that explores themes of frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Tony Hoagland and Diane Seuss, roberts's musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what could be, negotiating the past without losing hope for the future.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for UNMET"One emerges from the agile linguistic theatrics of this book [UNMET] feeling requited, met, seen, and inspired-a sensation that moves from writer to reader. From daring to darling."
-Lisa Russ Spaar, The Adroit Journal
"In alternately nervous and incisive modes, roberts explores the profound contradictions behind even the most clear-eyed criticisms or desires . . . With a resolute inward stare, roberts reveals the cumulative nature of life."
-Emily Mernin, Literary Review of Canada
"UNMET reads as thrillingly unconcerned with what poetry 'should' be. Poems veer fearlessly across lyricism and experimentalism, pain and humor, vulnerability and standing one's ground."
-Madelaine Caritas Longman, Montreal Review of Books
"[roberts] admirably permits wide swathes of herself on the page, yet without being didactic or maudlin and without overwriting."
-Pearl Pirie, The Miramichi Reader
"[roberts'] language is 'surprise-drenched'. . . this fantastic book is a piling on of surprising images and poetic structures and creative desires allowing both reader and poet the opportunity to rise above the Dollar Store desolation and grief and human injustice that plague our society"
-Chris Banks, The Woodlot
"roberts's poetic imagery is crystalline and vibrant, drawing the reader in with its uniquely surreal consistency . . . UNMET, when finished, leaves the reader with more questions and thoughts, evaluating longings and appearances, pondering how to best meet the world with thoughtfulness and compassion."
-Kim Fahner, Periodicities
"Restless, unsatisfied, deeply felt, and vividly accomplished, UNMET crackles with striking lines and images. Like the book's title, these poems document divisive experience with forceful aspiration, remaining defiant in the face of complacency and injustice. Personal and political, this book is a journey and a love affair. Through shorter lyrics and remarkable sustained poems like 'Soup,' 'I Taste Good and Bad,' or the tour de reflexion of 'A Lefthanded Scissors for Paul McCartney,' UNMET's rich language passionately argues for a 'tower of honest affection.' It's a feat that requires poise, and roberts is up for the task, nimbly travelling a hair-raising wire between desolation and beauty."
-David O'Meara, author of Masses on Radar
"In this rich collection of poetry, stephanie roberts gets us to open up as to what the core of our emotions are telling us; in fact, she gets to what the evidence before us would have us conclude. She points with deliciously layered language to the brutality, absurdity and hypocrisy of the systems of society and to our collective and historical inheritances. We are enticed and entrapped by her fluid writing, cutting in all the right places, daring us to wake up to the reality that surrounds. stephanie roberts operates as a disruptor with this effective collection that points to the times in which we live."
-Leslie Roach, author of Finish This Sentence
Praise for rushes from the river of disappointment
"roberts speaks with clarity and certainty, in a firm and haunting voice. This is an author clearly driven by a need to articulate what is missed. She is unafraid to end a poem abruptly and to let the quiet that follows do some of the speaking. She's also clearly having fun-with physics, with form, with the second grammar of the line break, and with memories joyous and shocking and neither and both."
-Quebec Writers' Federation A.M. Klein Award jury
"This collection enchanted me-smart, thoughtful, inventive, unafraid, poignant, and engaging, these poems are spot on. How lucky are we in this heartbreaking world to have roberts' compelling voice of beauty, humor, and depth allowing us to dip our toes in this exquisite river of poems."
-Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Hourglass Museum
"A moving and poignant book of poetry, in which roberts exhibits tremendous range in both form and tone. Easily one of the finest poetry titles out this spring."
-Annick MacAskill, author Murmurations
"A sweeping force of music, pulsing images, clear wit, and tenderness. Within beautifully formed poems, there is extensive consideration of what we can understand about love and grief alongside faith and 'unbelief' over time."
-Montreal Review of Books
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Emeryville
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
168 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77196-657-3 (9781771966573)
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
stephanie roberts is the author of rushes from the river disappointment, a Quebec Writers' Federation finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018, a recipient of the Sage Hill Writing award for Black Excellence, and a Canada Council of the Arts grantee. Her work has been critically praised and featured in well over one hundred periodicals and anthologies, in print and online, throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a citizen of Canada, Panama, and the US, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.