Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes by Jennifer LoveGrove

Longlisted for the 2018 Raymond Souster Award

Beautiful Children With Pet Foxes by Giller Prize-longlisted author Jennifer LoveGrove bears witness to moments of extreme crisis that will take you on an odyssey through a terrain of startling dreamscapes. These are poems haunted by the ghosts of alienation, trauma, delusion, and fear that the past decade has instilled in us. Here you will encounter a whole host of personas, both tame and wild—from humans, to foxes, moose, deer and crows, slugs, fish, beetles, mosquitos, earthworms, and more—who give voice to the things we can’t express in our daily lives.

Watch the Book Launch and Reading:

Praise for Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes:

“LoveGrove’s poetry apprentices itself to the world we live in, pacing out the dimensions of the enclosure called the present–the enclosures of culture, history, family, and other patriarchal institutions–with a keen eye and a relentless heart. In pursuit simultaneously of holistic perception, love, and an escape route, LoveGrove invites words to hold hands in unusual combinations, enters dreams and lets consciousness run feral. “There was a war going on and / ours was a very important mission,” LoveGrove writes, and it’s true.” —River Halen

Press Coverage:

“Jennifer LoveGrove’s Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes also stretches the possibility of lyric expression with a dreamlike twist.” —Domenica Martinello, The Globe and Mail

“In Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes, language splits the ambient lighting into its hidden constituent parts. The result is a world that shimmers with the strangeness that it always really had.” —Geoffrey Morrison, The Rusty Toque

“LoveGrove runs a tight ship.” —Michael Dennis, Today’s Book of Poetry

“Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes… soars into difficult spells that enact, as all memorable poetry must, its own deviant and delectable universe.” —Catherine Owen, Canadian Literature

“Other writers might do well to apprentice themselves to LoveGrove’s dark, dense lines.” —Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press

“A wonderful collection.” —Jon R. Flieger, CV2

At the Desk: Jennifer LoveGrove —Open Book

5 Questions for Jennifer LoveGrove —IFOA Blog

Outfoxed: Books with Foxes Delight Readers Young and Old —49th Shelf

Poetry Must-Reads for Spring —49th Shelf

2017 Best Books of the Year —The Writers’ Trust of Canada blog

Review: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes —Dean Steadman, The Malahat Review

Jennifer LoveGrove is the author of the Scotianank Giller Prize–longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as two poetry collections: I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. In 2010, LoveGrove was nominated for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature and in 2015, her poetry was shortlisted for the Lit POP Awards. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications across North America. She divides her time between downtown Toronto and rural Ontario.