Magnetic North

Reviews

“The ecologically-centered nonfiction vignettes are lyric, descriptive and brimming with carefully curated sensory detail. This is an instantly likable, highly intelligent, and empathetic narrator, one that we can trust from beginning to end.” — Brenda Schmidt, poet

“Jenna Butler takes us to the Norwegian Arctic, providing the reader with starkly vivid, incisive, and memorable images of its raw, unforgiving nature, the profound effects of what humans are doing to the North, and the equally powerful effects on the author herself. Her writing is beautiful, spare, inventive, and carved out of the experience with razor-sharp clarity.” — Lorri Neilsen Glenn, award-winning author, poet, editor, and teacher

“Magnetic North is a beautiful little book, full of moments of intense vision, but it’s also another ecological warning, couched in a poet’s deep understanding of what she has seen & recorded in our now changing north. Wholly engaging both emotionally & intellectually, it’s one of those books that truly adds to our understanding of the world we live in & continue to wound.” — Douglas Barbour, Eclectic Ruckus

“The remote island of Spitsbergen, on Norway’s northern Svalbard archipelago, provides the setting for Butler’s evocative ruminations on the harsh beauty at the edge of the world.... Butler’s book is not a standard travel narrative; rather, she wields poetic prose to describe a place that most humans will never visit. The result is highly recommended for lovers of poetry and nature writing.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“[Jenna Butler is an] acute observer and a precise and cogent writer... [Hers] is a journey motivated by curiosity about the north, and a longing for sights to be seen before they disappear forever. Her descriptions of settlements scattered between mainland Norway and the Arctic Circle are evocative: her prose is poetic, and her poems (interspersed in the text) are visual and concrete.” — Hilary Turner, Canadian Literature