Siteseeing

by Ariel Gordon, Brenda Schmidt

Between February 2021 and March 2022, Ariel Gordon and Brenda Schmidt wrote a collaborative poetry manuscript, formatted like a call and response. Ariel intended to write about urban Manitoba, the city and its trees, and Brenda was to write about rural Saskatchewan and birds. Over the course of the year, the matter of place took over and the intentions branched and flew apart. They both wrote birds and trees but also moose and mushrooms, pronghorns and wild turkeys, and people making their way through it all. They wrote climate as it was manifested in drought-stressed trees and stunted crops covered in grasshoppers, in wildfires and wildfire smoke hanging over the prairies. They wrote home as they found it.

150 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2023

About the author

Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with Plume Winnipeg that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. She is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are the essay collection Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and the epistolary spec-fic novel Blood Letters, co-authored with graphic novelist GMB Chomichuk (Great Plains Press, 2025). Her work appeared in Best Canadian Essays 2025, edited by Emily Urquhart, and will be in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, edited by Mary Dalton.

Reviews

[Michael]

My interview with Gordon discussing the book is here:
https://umfm.com/programming/broadcas...

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really lovely book of collaborative poetry. Ariel Gordon (Manitoban poet) and Brenda Schmidt (SK poet) write short poems back and forth to each other about nature and climate, and their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. This book was beautiful, true and revelled in the importance of nature.

[Louella Lester · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the back and forth of these poems, like runners passing the baton in a relay race.

[Mitchell Toews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grab this book! ❤️ 🍁