Dearly

The collection of a lifetime from the bestselling novelist and poet

By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.

Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognisable and celebrated themes, but distilled - from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend. It is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.

“Margaret Atwood has always been a poet; her poetry collections make visible the taproot of the wry wise metaphysic that runs through her fiction and essays, and in a precarious time her new collection, Dearly , is a source of uncompromising elemental warmth”

Here we see Atwood at the height of her poetic powers New York Times Book Review
A poignant yet playful collection of verse, about endings and departures, it is sliced with clever, sharp humour Daily Telegraph
This collection of poems is a reckoning with the past that comes from a place of wisdom and control . . . You can almost hear her speaking voice, see the twinkle in her eye . . . wonderfully observed Observer
Atwood's first poetry collection in over a decade is intimate, lingering delicately between the human and the natural, and this world and the next New Statesman
She's become world famous for The Handmaid's Tale, and jointly won the 2019 Booker Prize for The Testaments, but Canadian author Margaret Atwood was once better known as a poet . . . this new volume brings together some of her favourite themes, from zombies, werewolves and aliens, to the passage of time and the most pressing political issues of the day Evening Standard
She turns her eye to the past, to nature, to fantasy, to current affairs, all with the calm eye of a writer who has nothing to prove -- Maria Crawford Financial Times Books of the Year
Atwood is surely one of our planet's most priceless commodities Goodreads Choice Awards 2020
Margaret Atwood has always been a poet; her poetry collections make visible the taproot of the wry wise metaphysic that runs through her fiction and essays, and in a precarious time her new collection, Dearly, is a source of uncompromising elemental warmth -- Ali Smith Observer, Books of the Year
I finished this collection deeply impressed by Atwood's capacity for powerful, lyric description -- Rebecca Tamás i
A new volume of poetry by the writer of wit and optimism . . . Just when we needed her most Gentlewoman
This whole collection stands as a mighty demonstration of how great poetry can embody and celebrate the sheer vibrancy and beauty of life, in the face of the most profound sorrow and terror. Read these poems aloud, read them carefully, read them with joy and tears; savour the raw power of their rhythms and assonances, and the sheer mastery with which Atwood, at the height of her powers, transforms anger and grief into glinting beauty and brilliance. And then ask yourself whether, if humanity survives, any future historian could ever find a richer, more courageous or more truthful account of what it was, and how it felt, to be alive in these times; and give yourself the answer - no, most truly, she could not -- Joyce McMillan Scotsman
Elegaic yet cautionary, Atwood's first new collection since 2007's The Door revolves around themes of mortality, environmental jeopardy, memory, feminism, and loss . . . Combining the wit of Dorothy Parker with the wisdom of Emily Dickinson, Atwood adds a steely grace and richness all her own. If there is beauty in despair, one may find it here Library Journal
She's one of the few contemporary writers whose poetry and prose receive equal amounts of praise. Dearly, which collects her first new poems in 10 years, covers love and loss, humanity and nature. Also: Zombies. She's keeping us on our toes, as usual Washington Post
Atwood, one of the most celebrated, decorated and admired novelists in the world, started out as a poet -- Bryan Appleyard Sunday Times
Poems, Atwood argues, aren't the rhetoric of the immediate; they emerge slowly out of human understanding's glacial melt . . . Here we see Atwood at the height of her poetic powers: her imagery made tangible with sound . . . The more Atwood wields specifics, the more of the world she skewers with her fantastically sharp imagination -- Emilia Phillips New York Times Book Review

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. She established herself as a poet in the 1960s and has published sixteen books of poems, most recently The Door in 2007.

Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, went back into the bestseller charts in 2017, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

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