Over the course of a career spanning three decades, Lorna Crozier has become one of Canada’s most beloved poets, receiving high acclaim and numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Poetry Award, and the Canadian Authors Association Award. Now, in this definitive selection of poems, which draws on her eight major collections and includes many of the poems for which she is justly celebrated, Crozier’s trademark investigations of family, spirituality, love’s fierce attachments, and bereavement and loss have been given a new framework. As a sapphire generates a blue light from within, The Blue Hour of the Day demonstrates Crozier’s dazzling capacity to bring depths to light, unfailingly and unflinchingly. It represents the best work of an icon of Canadian poetry.

“One of the most original poets alive. . . .”

Books in Canada

"What a joy to have a volume of selected poems by this marvelous Canadian poet, storyteller, truth-teller, visionary."

— Ursula K Le Guin, New York Times Book Review

“One of the most original poets alive. . . .”

— Books in Canada

“Crozier’s fans have come to expect graceful clarity, sly humour, a strong affinity for the animal world and a subversive feminist tilt to the mirror she holds up to human affairs.”

— Toronto Star

“Crozier’s fans have come to expect graceful clarity, sly humour, a strong affinity for the animal world and a subversive feminist tilt to the mirror she holds up to human affairs.”

Toronto Star

One of Canada’s most multi-award-winning poets comes of age in her first selected book of poems.

Lorna Crozier’s warm, evocative poetry cuts to the bone of truth and is always in demand. Her successful previous collections are now honed into this mid-career selection that spans three decades. This book will be a must-have for Lorna Crozier’s large poetry audience.

Lorna Crozier has published fifteen books of poetry, including The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems; Whetstone; Apocrypha of Light; What the Living Won’t Let Go; A Saving Grace; Everything Arrives at the Light; Inventing the Hawk; Angels of Flesh, Angels of Silence; and The Garden Going On Without Us. She has also edited several anthologies, among them Desire in Seven Voices and, with Patrick Lane, Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast and Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia, where she teaches at the University of Victoria.