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In 2015, Kayla Czaga won the Gerald Lampert Award for best volume of poetry published by a first time poet, as well as the Canadian Writer Award for writers under 30 for her debut poetry collection, For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, $18.95), published in 2014. It was also shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2015 and the Late Night Library 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry. In this debut collection, permeated by Czaga's quick-witted, playful language, she moves from family to girlhood to adulthood in a collection of funny and sad family portraits.
Czaga's follow-up, Dunk Tank (Anansi, 2019) is an imaginative and sometimes absurdist exploration of the landscape of the body and of adult life. In the title poem, a teenage speaker is suspended between knowledge and experience, confidently hovering before the world plunges her into adult life. This poetry collection reimagines the body as a strange and unknowable landscape: full of cancers that “burst like blackberries,” a butt that could run for prime minister of Canada, and the underworld lurking in Winona Ryder’s pores. Clouds become testicles and uteri turn into goldfish, flickering and fragile, but still ultimately glowing. These poems explore the varied and strange relationships that underpin a young woman’s coming of age, from inconsequential boyfriends to the friendships that rescue us from “grey daily moments.” Described in publicity as "playful and dark, comic and disturbing", the narrator seems unsure of how the world works and her part in it, but she forges a landscape of metaphor and gleaming, dense imagery.
In Midway (Anansi, 2024), Czaga writes: “I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch.” It is a reflection of her search for meaning after the death of her parents, as well as an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. She visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London’s Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. These poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak—both comforting and not. Other characters showcased include a suburban father-in-law as he copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. And Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him.
Born in Alberta, Kayla Czaga grew up in Kitimat before moving to Victoria to complete her undergraduate degree in writing at the University of Victoria. She later became a MFA graduate in Creative Writing from UBC. Her poetry, nonfiction and fiction have been published in The Walrus, Event, the Antigonish Review and other journals.
BOOKS:
Midway (Anansi, 2024) $21.99 9781487012601
Dunk Tank (Anansi, 2019) $19.95 9781487005962
Enemy of the People (Anstruther, 2015). Chapbook.
For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014) $18.95 9780889713031
Midway: Poems (House of Anansi Press, 2024) $21.99 9781487012601
[BCBW 2025]
Czaga's follow-up, Dunk Tank (Anansi, 2019) is an imaginative and sometimes absurdist exploration of the landscape of the body and of adult life. In the title poem, a teenage speaker is suspended between knowledge and experience, confidently hovering before the world plunges her into adult life. This poetry collection reimagines the body as a strange and unknowable landscape: full of cancers that “burst like blackberries,” a butt that could run for prime minister of Canada, and the underworld lurking in Winona Ryder’s pores. Clouds become testicles and uteri turn into goldfish, flickering and fragile, but still ultimately glowing. These poems explore the varied and strange relationships that underpin a young woman’s coming of age, from inconsequential boyfriends to the friendships that rescue us from “grey daily moments.” Described in publicity as "playful and dark, comic and disturbing", the narrator seems unsure of how the world works and her part in it, but she forges a landscape of metaphor and gleaming, dense imagery.
In Midway (Anansi, 2024), Czaga writes: “I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch.” It is a reflection of her search for meaning after the death of her parents, as well as an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. She visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London’s Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. These poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak—both comforting and not. Other characters showcased include a suburban father-in-law as he copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. And Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him.
Born in Alberta, Kayla Czaga grew up in Kitimat before moving to Victoria to complete her undergraduate degree in writing at the University of Victoria. She later became a MFA graduate in Creative Writing from UBC. Her poetry, nonfiction and fiction have been published in The Walrus, Event, the Antigonish Review and other journals.
BOOKS:
Midway (Anansi, 2024) $21.99 9781487012601
Dunk Tank (Anansi, 2019) $19.95 9781487005962
Enemy of the People (Anstruther, 2015). Chapbook.
For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014) $18.95 9780889713031
Midway: Poems (House of Anansi Press, 2024) $21.99 9781487012601
[BCBW 2025]
