Midway - by Kayla Czaga (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Finalist, 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

Honest, elegiac, characteristically strange, and frequently funny, Midway is an exploration of grief in all its manifestations.

"I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch," writes Kayla Czaga in her third collection, Midway, an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. In her search for meaning in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, Czaga visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London's Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. Honest, elegiac, characteristically strange, and frequently funny, these poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak--both comforting and not. Along with the parents the poet mourns, this collection showcases a varied cast. A suburban father-in-law copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him. Midway is a welcome and necessary collection from one of the most celebrated and accomplished poets of her generation.

Review Quotes

"Powerful and controlled and revelatory ... [Midway] is brilliant, and inspiring, and should be read by everyone who cares deeply, and passionately, not just about poetry, but the important things poetry tries to make us see: like grief, and our inability to contain it." -- The Woodlot

"Czaga blends grief's range of emotions masterfully in Midway." -- British Columbia Review

"Midway is funny, genuine, and well written. Czaga offers a fitting and vulnerable elegy for her parents and a harrowing meditation on her life in the aftermath." -- Literary Review of Canada