Hesitating Once to Feel Glory shortlisted for the Butler Prize

The Victoria Book Prize Society has announced the shortlist for the 2023 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. Maleea Acker’s poetry collection Hesitating Once to Feel Glory (Nightwood Editions, 2022) has been shortlisted for the award.

Hesitating Once to Feel Glory is a dauntless poetry collection crafted with emotion and bold style. These are poems filled with daring leaps and precise, deft metaphors. There is machinery, there are imaginaries; a dictator selects the musical soundtrack. The poems cajole and praise both the world and interior life with an erotic charge and enduring hope.

Maleea Acker lives in unceded W̱SÁNEĆ territories on Vancouver Island. She is the author of two previous poetry collections, The Reflecting Pool (Pedlar Press, 2009) and Air-Proof Green (Pedlar Press, 2012), as well as a non-fiction book, Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star Books, 2012). She has lived, worked and been an arts fellow in Canada, the US, Spain and Mexico. Acker teaches geography, Canadian studies and literature at the University of Victoria and Camosun College.

The $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, now in its 20th year, is awarded to a Greater Victoria author for the best book published in the categories of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. The other finalists are Robert Amos forE.J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist (Touchwood Editions), Mary Bomford for Red Dust and Cicada Songs (Caitlin Press), Pauline Holdstock for Confessions with Keith (Biblioasis) and Katłįà (Catherine) Lafferty for This House Is Not a Home (Roseway Publishing).