Newhook, Jennifer May: Last Hours

Riddle Fence, paperback

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

Publisher Marketing:

Last Hours is a fast-paced collection of poems about motherhood, Newfoundland, poverty, mortality and the absolute mirth of being alive. Jennifer May Newhook's voice is unflinchingly unique as she finds joy and humour in the darkest crags of Newfoundland life.

Last Hours is a propulsive collection of poems that stalks a rocky landscape of racing shadow and volatile sunlight. Equal parts unsettling and celebratory, these poems poise the reader on the unstable hinge that separates joy from sorrow and the mundane from the ethereal. Mining mythos and memory, séance and science, motherhood and mortality, the unforgettable cast of characters that populate these poems are vividly rendered and tempered with wry humour. From the frustrated musings of Selene, Goddess of the Moon, the formulas of Fibonacci, and that mesmerizing Queen of the Grade Five classroom, Wanda Whalen, to the enigmatic Umma Mumma Man, eternally roaming 1980s Rabbittown with his dented shoeshine box, these poems dive deep into our unavoidable past even as they surface, striving for an unknowable future. Battered by the powerful currents of the North Atlantic but grounded firmly in the coastal landscape of the island of Newfoundland, Jennifer May Newhook's diverse debut pulls the reader out on a powerful riptide of imagining, anchored by pure sonic force.