The Clearing

Allison Adair's debut collection won the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Its speakers live in a world where women are expected to haul what must be saved to safety, while men walk away without hesitation.

The poems are set among landscapes mined for gold and other valuable ores, and they are voiced by women who know what it means to be emptied from within. The book moves from the era of civil war to the years after the recession, reworking fairy tales that feel uncomfortably familiar. Cruelty and tenderness appear side by side throughout, and the poems often revisit childhood stories with harsher, stranger details.

The collection digs into the grime beneath our fingernails, both personal and national, and draws out memories of who we once were. Its subjects are girlhood, the natural world and family, handled without sentimentality. The tone is dark yet beautiful, and the poems leave a lingering, disquieting effect on the reader. Adair pays close attention to the silences people circle around.