Revery: A Year of Bees

Image credit: Jenna Butler.

I am delighted to work with the poet and essayist Jenna Butler again this year, updating her website to highlight her latest work. Her new book, Revery: A Year of Bees, launches at Wolsak & Wynn’s Prose Launch event tomorrow evening with authors Susana Perly, Mark Sampson, and Anne Stone. Like all launches in this strange year, it will be online — which means Jenna, who lives in the very northern part of Alberta, and readers all over the world, can gather to celebrate without a long trip to Toronto. Tickets available — and you can order the book!

“This chronicling of the endearing bond between humans, the Land, and the Bees teaches us about reciprocity, inter-dependence, and self-determination: the very teachings Indigenous peoples, who have deep connections to Mother Earth, have been trying to share with the world all along.”

— Mandy Bayha

About the Book:

“I hope you're okay in there, lovelies. I hope you're warm.”

After five years of working with bees on her farm in northern Alberta, Jenna Butler shares with the reader the rich experience of keeping hives. Starting with a rare bright day in late November as the bees are settling in for winter she takes us through a year in beekeeping on her small piece of the boreal forest. Weaving together her personal story with the practical aspects of running a farm she takes us into the worlds of honeybees and wild bees. She considers the twinned development of the canola and honey industries in Alberta and the impact of crop sprays; debates the impact of introduced flowers versus native flowers, the effect of colony collapse disorder and the protection of natural environments for wild bees. But this is also the story of women and bees and how beekeeping became Jenna Butler's personal survival story.

Image credit: Jenna Butler.