Juniper

by Kerri Huffman

Kerri Huffman’s debut collection, juniper, works like an X-Ray machine held up to the poet’s heart. With nimble wit and an edgy, playful voice, Huffman demonstrates the fragility of our deepest connections. Through diary-like reflections—in gardens, kitchens, city parks, nightclubs, art galleries, in various cities—the book charts the final months in the arc of a thorny, transformational, corrosive relationship. juniper is concerned with the stakes of friendship and the savagery lurking at the edges of polite society. Huffman’s haunting verse ultimately reveals how memory clings to desire in a world of inevitable loss.

80 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2025

Reviews

[Michael Thorner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharp and intelligent, with pithy wordplay. Poetry with red wine teeth, after a good run but before a half a sedative.

[Alberta Views Magazine]

Frontenac House’s Poetry Quintet 2025 is a diverse array of collections, each offering up challenging questions about relationships to both self and others.

But of these five releases, juniper, by kerri huffman, may be the most startling of all. These well-crafted poems pay homage to platonic friendship, its urgencies, awkwardnesses, bonds of addictive behaviour and ruptures of unreturned phone calls and Facebook disses. A chronicle of Jeanne’s 49 days at the titular rehab composes half the text (each piece starting with italicized lists of the speaker’s weight, workouts, drinks, pills), while other lyrics incorporate her son, art galleries and stirring moments where “Love imprints itself bodily.”

Review by Catherine Owen
Full review at: https://albertaviews.ca/frontenac-hou...