In math for couples, we re-visit the past to discover our place in the contemporary world. A long-dead father watches his daughter work on her Mac, a woman converses with a photo of her young self. Adele Graf leads us on a journey that is rich and hopeful, evoking powerful nostalgia even if we've never been to the places described. When these poems release us back to our current lives, we feel restored to savour the warmth in a “glad red hat” and the love that arrives “still summer lush.”

Adele Graf grew up outside New York City and immigrated to Canada in 1968. buckled into the sky is her second poetry book. Her first book, math for couples (Guernica Editions, 2017), was shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award. She has also published two poetry chapbooks, a Baltic Friday early in grey (above/ground press, 2017) and Directions to Suffern NY circa 1950 (TREE Press, 2018), which won the TREE Chapbook Award. She lives in Ottawa.

Adele Graf's profile page

• Short-listed, Archibald Lampman Award (Short-listed)

Adele Graf’s poems explore the inner worlds of family, including grandmother, father, mother, husband, childhood self and aging self with an openness and honesty that is stunning, using her pen as both scalpel and microscope. A master of slant rhyme, she is also unafraid to experiment in the far reaches of poetics; and you’ll never think of popcorn in the same way again.

Mark Frutkin

Whether she’s revisiting fraught scenes from her past with wry humour or facing them down deadpan, Adele Graf infuses whatever she touches—bric-a-brac, childhood haunts, or stricken relatives—with a vividness that places them stage-centre. Charting a memorable path through several generations of family upheaval and continuance, she evokes her grandmother’s New Jersey milliner shop, her father’s tragic early death, and her own journey to late-life plenitude with a sharp eye for the waystations that lead from disillusionment to delight.

Peter Richardson

math for couples is a warm and playful debut collection. You can feel the pleasure Adele Graf takes in the words she juggles and the forms she explores in this very intimate adventure.

Stuart Ross, author of A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent,