women & roosters by Fenn Stewart

In women & roosters, Fenn Stewart presents a contradictory world that is both beautiful and brutal, humorous and heartbreaking.

Taking its title from Galen’s claim that “all creatures are sad after sex except women and roosters,” this semi-autobiographical long poem expertly winds its way through topics as far-reaching as climate change, nature, trail-running, settler nationalism, motherhood, love, loss, and illness.

In both form and content, the book revels in opposing forces. Cities, forests, and oceans are sites of both abundance and abandonment. Humans, birds, deer, crabs, plants, and trees thrive and multiply, but also get sick and die. Living things eat and are eaten, find joy and misery, run, fly, and swim—and meet natural and unnatural ends.

Written in a refreshingly conversational tone, while offering striking (and at times unsettling) imagery, women & roosters is a forthright and deeply emotional triumph that will linger with readers long after its final, vibrant page.

Praise for women & roosters

“In women & roosters, Fenn Stewart deftly subverts the Canadian colonial wilderness poem, crafting intimate maps of unrequited love that resonate with Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s notion that ‘the true subject of poetry is the loss of the beloved.’ Through precise and polished phrases, she blends eros with politics, offering compelling insights into ‘the earth on fire.'”—Asher Ghaffar, author of Wasps in a Golden Dream Hum a Strange Music

“‘What if prickliness is a form of fidelity?’ Fenn Stewart asks in this collection that traces connections between invasive plants, persistent viruses, and a relationship the speaker isn’t ready to let go of yet. These poems are luminous, smart company, self-aware, and surprising.” —River Halen, author of Dream Rooms

Press Coverage

Most Anticipated: Our 2025 Fall Poetry Preview —49th Shelf

Poetry: a Self-ish List of Threads and Connections —49th Shelf

“An unrequited love happens so much inside the mind; is it possible to have such a love free from the literature of love? From the literature of the body, of its animal nature? From the literature of nature? Women and roosters are said to have one quality in common; according to the Greco-Roman physician Galen these two are the only kinds of creatures who don’t feel sad after sex. Well, maybe not right after. But until we can swap places, like in the Kate Bush song, there’s no way of knowing all that’s in the lover’s heart.” —Dawn MacDonald, The Seaboard Review

“The prose lyric of women & roosters is composed as a single, extended, book-length assemblage of meditative, self-contained accumulations, set in prose with lyric, gestural flourish, writing an anxiety of and around loss, longing, heartbreak.” —rob mclennan

A ‘best of’ list of 2025 Canadian poetry books —rob mclennan

“Stewart’s stream-of-consciousness lyricism is one of the book’s greatest strengths, creating turns of phrase that are both effortlessly fluid and carefully constructed.” —Manahil Bandukwala, Room Magazine

“I initially felt drawn to this poem because I love the idea of a version of female sexuality that has something in common with that of a rooster. I admire women who are bold, selfish, and unselfconscious in their desires, because this is a way of disobeying femininity—but tragically, we are all too perceptive to walk around like roosters.” —Rachel Robinson, Full Stop