A new poetry collection by a young and talented Canadian poet, Chad Campbell, finalist for the 2013 Malahat Long Poem Prize

Beginning with the arrival of the Campbell clan in Canada in 1827—“pale scot farmers fording the river, / seated backwards in refusal”—Laws & Locks tracks the history of one family’s struggle with depression, madness, and mental illness. Chad Campbell’s first book of poetry is a brilliant investigation, at once dazzling and unflinching, into the way our predecessors bear on our choices in the present, and how present-day consequences extend backwards in time. A skilled, self-possessed, and clear-eyed poet, Campbell has produced a work of art that, while not quite confessional, transforms the private, dark, often stigmatized regions of his life into powerful poetry.