Otolith

Winner, 2018 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and longlisted, 2018 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Otolith — the ear stone — is a series of bones that help us to orient ourselves in space. In Otolith, Emily Nilsen attempts a similar feat in poetry: to turn the reader’s attention to their relationship to the world, revealing an intertidal state between the rootedness of place and the uncertainty and tenuousness of human connection. This astonishing debut, at once spare and lush, displays an exquisite lyricism built on musical lines and mature restraint. Combining a scientist’s precision and a poet’s sensitivity, Otolith examines the ache of nostalgia in the relentless passage of time.