Let the Bees Go Then:
A Selection of Poems by Heather Simeney MacLeod

ESTIMATED PUBLICATION DATE:
Spring 2026

A new book is on the horizon for early 2026. It has long been on our minds that we would like to celebrate the poetry of Canadian poet Heather Simeney Macleod. Crispin first came across her writing some twenty years ago when asked to consider the work of a number of young contemporary poets. Heather immediately stood out from the rest. We both felt that frisson one feels when encountering a voice which speaks truth in a language that is beautiful and inevitable. There is both revelation and recognition in such writing: the previously unknown and intimately known cohere.

Her poetry joins the everyday with the extraordinary; memory with loss; European culture with indigenous story and experience; sorrow with joy. Above all, Heather Simeney MacLeod writes with an emotional honesty and depth that speaks for the human heart through all cultures, generations, and experiences. A Metis of Scottish and Cree descent, she renders her particular knowledge of how those strains have defined yet not limited her. She does not ignore the injustices, the fractures, or the griefs, but finds ways of moving through them to an understanding that includes the reader in her journeys.

This selection of her poems, chosen by Crispin and Jan, takes its title from an unpublished poem, ‘Let the Bees Go Then’, and is drawn from her four previously published volumes of poetry and more recent work. The bees seem a lovely simile for the poems’ venture out to a new readership. The text will run to some 100 pages.

We expect to publish Let the Bees Go Then in the spring of 2026. We will offer more details on pricing and scheduling when they become firm.