A beautifully realized story of an internationally acclaimed poet’s coming of age

A volume of poignant recollections by one of Canada’s most celebrated poets, Small Beneath the Sky is a tender, unsparing portrait of a family and a place.

Lorna Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer parlors—where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism. At the heart of the book is Crozier’s fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life—sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking—are interspersed with prose poems. Lorna Crozier approaches the past with a tactile sense of discovery, tracing her beginnings with a poet’s precision and an open heart.

• Governor General’s Literary Award for Inventing the Hawk, 1992
• Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Everything Arrives at the Light (1996) and Inventing the Hawk (1993)
• National Magazine Awards Gold Medal for The Old Order/Night/The White Planet, 1994
• Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for What the Living Won’t Let Go, 2000