In Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice, celebrated poets from across Canada and the U.S. consider the beauty, fragility and decline of ice. These are poems that ask: what will be released as the planet’s ice melts? And how will this reshape the planet we call home?

sublime (adjective) of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.

sublime (verb) (Chemistry): (Of a solid substance) to change directly into vapor when heated, typically forming a solid deposit again on cooling.

In Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice, poets from across Turtle Island explore what it means to enter into conversation with ice. The poems in Yvonne Blomer's third, water-focused anthology exemplify sublime as both verb and adjective: these are poems that skate, drink, stomp, crush and dive. In poems that range from street hockey, to snow angels, to meltwater, poets write to the ever-changing ways of ice. Other poems grapple with fires that melt permafrost and rising temperatures that fracture and erode lives. In the poems, fissures form into ever-expanding crevasses, and animals suffer because of humanity’s negative impact on Earth’s most ancient of water systems: ice.

Sublime: Poems for Vanishing Ice features poems by Governor General Award winners, Poet Laureates in cities across Canada, and other important voices for our time and place in history. Contributors include John Barton, Gary Barwin, Marilyn Bowering, Elizabeth Bradfield, Kate Braid, Terry Ann Carter, Trevor Carolan, Dymphny Dronyk, Karen Enns, Katia Grubisic, Penn Kemp, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Anita Lahey, Evelyn Lau, Joanna Lilley, Annick MacAskill, David Martin, Micheline Maylor, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Catherine Owen, Arleen Pare, Troy Sebastian, Bren Simmers, Rob Taylor, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Tom Wayman, and many, many more.