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.