Paper Boat

Paper Boat

New and Selected Poems 1961-2023

Summary

An extraordinary career-spanning collection from one of the most revered poets and storytellers of our age

Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood – a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes – Paper Boat assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume.

In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful, and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters – mythological figures, animals, and everyday people – all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. ‘How can one live with such a heart?’ Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood’s journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.

Spanning six decades of work – from her earliest beginnings to brand new poems – this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors.

We should regard Atwood as a poet first and foremost – just one who happens to be a highly regarded novelist’ Sunday Herald

About the author

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. 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, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and shared the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade; in 2022 Burning Questions, a collection of essays, was a Sunday Times bestseller; and in 2023, Old Babes in the Wood, a collection of short stories, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller.

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, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. 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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