The Idea of An Entire Life
Poems
Daring and vulnerable, this is the highly anticipated new collection from Griffin Poetry Prize winner Billy-Ray Belcourt.
In The Idea of An Entire Life, Belcourt delivers an intimate examination of twenty-first-century anguish, love, queerness, and political possibility. Through lyric verse, sonnets, fieldnotes, and fragments, the poems, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes slyly humorous, are always finely crafted, putting to use the autobiographical and philosophical style that has come to define Belcourt’s body of work. By its close, the collection makes the urgent argument that we are each our own little statues of grief and awe.
Available for Pre-Order
$25.00
September 9, 2025
BILLY-RAY BELCOURT (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection This Wound is a World. He has twice been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award—once in poetry for the debut and in non-fiction for his memoir, A History of My Brief Body. Both his works of fiction, A Minor Chorus and Coexistence, were national bestsellers. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
The Idea of An Entire Life
Billy-Ray Belcourt
A Minor Chorus
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Coexistence
Billy-Ray Belcourt