This collection is filled with fearless and insightful poems that explore one woman's experience of chronic illness, shifting sexual identity, and long periods of solitude. They chronicle a building and stripping away of identity, asking who we are when we can no longer define ourselves in habitual ways.

Anna Swanson's poetry leads you through a life that tries to deal with a misunderstood illness, a gradual acceptance of one's sexuality, and a sometimes onerous relationship with nature. Her writing is as honest as it is complex, and it attempts to reconcile an identity that has been distorted by illness through a profound analysis of memory and individual meaning. With poems that run the gamut from fearful to the absurd, that are at once deep and pithy, Anna Swanson proves in The Nights, Also that she is a brave new voice in Canadian poetry.