Rue

Rue Synopsis

In her compelling debut poetry collection, shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award, Melissa Bull explores the familial, romantic, and sexual ties that bind lives to cities. Rue takes us through its alleys, parks, and kitchens with a robust lyricism and language that is at once inventive and plainspoken, compassionate and frank. In English, to rue is to regret; in French, la rue is the street Rue's poems provide the venue for moments of both recollection and motion.

Punctuated withneologisms and the bilingual dialogue of Montreal, the collection explores the author's upbringing in the working-class neighbourhood of St. Henri with her artist mother, follows her travels, friendships, and loves across North America, Europe, and Russia, and recounts her journalist father's struggles with terminal brain cancer. Inspired by powerful Quebec talents like Nelly Arcan, Marie-Sissy Labrèche, playwright Annick Lefebvre, Canadians poets Elizabeth Bachinsky, Nikki Reimer and David McGimpsey, Melissa Bull brings an unflinching new feminist voice to the Canadian literary scene.