Straddling genders, sexualities, and social positions, Canoodlers interrogates the growth and class leaps of a townie tomboy.
From family relations (“Dearly beloved, Don Cherry has better conversation skills than my stepfather, and my mother doesn’t love me anymore”) to shared anxieties (“Part of anyone can see how reasonable it is to stay at home and never leave, because you’ve anointed that wall, this toilet as safe, and you’d know it even if the lights never came back on”), Canoodlers is a personal study of contemporary North American culture, appropriating the language of marketing and pop culture, twisting and repositioning phrases that have become clichéd. These poems render the familiar unfamiliar and question how relationships function—families, friends, lovers—in contemporary suburban Canadian life.
Canoodlers is available for purchase through Harbour Publishing.
“We don’t often label ourselves voyeurs. We attempt to distance ourselves… Bennett’s poems allow readers to experience this badge in a raw and honest way, one that is familiar and welcoming rather than shocking.”
“This collection is an odd delight—graceful, singular, freewheeling, yet intractable… bennett’s sensuous, observational wit and sharp, salted humour infuse the poems.”
“Bennett’s poems take startling emotional risks in order to draw in and wrap arms around their readers.”