National Animal, Derek Webster’s second book of poetry, inhabits a wider public space than his acclaimed debut Mockingbird. In poems that extend beyond the biographical toward the political, Webster’s quiet, sharp-eyed narrator—a man “tripping / my way forward, trying to lead my own life”—watches history being erased in favour of more socially palatable ideas and comforting self-portraits. Uncompromising and substantial, National Animal explores our “civic moment” where “birds sing oblivion / estranged from all things,” and meditates, in a final image-rich sequence, on our place in a science-based cosmos.
![Ghost Stories: On Writing Biography](https://readquebec.ca/wp-content/uploads/formidable/2/Adamson_Ghost-Stories_FC-scaled.jpg)
![Ghost Stories: On Writing Biography](https://readquebec.ca/wp-content/uploads/formidable/2/Adamson_Ghost-Stories_FC-scaled.jpg)
McGill-Queen's University Press