The Electrocutionist

Once upon a time, you folded / around me like an envelope. Confronting the contradictions, pains, and passions of infidelity, Danielle Hubbard’s new poetry collection jaggedly depicts a mother’s death against the backdrop of a shattering extramarital affair. Following a strong narrative arc, The Electrocutionist shocks life into a full cast of characters – narrator, husband, lover, mother, father, sisters – each of whom is treated to their own portrait poem. The twin settings of rural Manitoba and Vancouver Island come to life as characters themselves. An electric physicality welds the collection together: What to do in the face of a mother’s terminal diagnosis? When a secret affair crashes into the open? When a marriage ties itself in knots? When a husband leaves? Run, run, run. Both concrete and surreal, flailingly emotional and tongue-in-cheek, The Electrocutionist bridges the age-old tradition of romance and the modern desire to explode the strictures of monogamy.