Ecco to Publish Margaret Atwood’s First Poetry Collection in Over a Decade, Dearly

HarperCollins imprint Ecco will publish Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s forthcoming book of poetry, Dearly, on Nov. 10. Dearly is Atwood’s first poetry collection in more than a decade.

A press release describes Dearly as follows:

Both [Atwood’s] longtime readers and new fans will be delighted by the book’s insight, empathy and wit. By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems in Dearly are about absences and endings, aging and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens, and aliens make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.

“Margaret Atwood’s new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived,” says Ecco president and publisher Daniel Halpern in a statement. “While many are familiar with her fiction, she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of the most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry.”

Dearly will be Atwood’s 18th poetry collection, and her first since 2007’s The Door. The author is best-known for her fiction, her most recent work of which is The Handmaid’s Tale sequel The Testaments, which was published in September 2019.

See Dearly’s cover art below.