Accidents After Happening: Poems

For readers of Leonard Cohen, Sharon Olds, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Jacques Prévert, George Elliott Clarke, Sylvia Plath, Warsan Shire, and Natalie Diaz.

The accidents of Priest’s collection are definitely not all “happy.” They move through a full range of human emotions: dread, grief, anger, ecstasy, lust, and empathy. Plus some magic levity. This is poetry you will want to recite aloud: lyrical love poems, sonnets, satires, ghazals, curses, and bitter invective. These are not snobby poems — they want and welcome readers who love euphony, who enjoy tasteful eroticism, who rage at injustice. People who grieve and gush — smart people who think critically and form their own opinions. And for those with a taste for “brevity forever.” Accidents After Happening also contains a whole new catalog of Priest’s aphorisms, proverbs, maxims, and sayings — the kind of work that recently prompted Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood to take to Twitter and praise Priest’s “snappy, funny, spot-on micro poems — plus much more.”

Priest is a people’s poet who believes that humanity harbors a deep and ancient biological need for the spirit and time-binding experiences of the incantatory and shamanistic and that these can only be acquired through the poetic outlook. His words have been quoted in the Farmers’ Almanac, posted in the Toronto transit system, sung in churches, denounced in the legislature, embedded in pavement, and turned into two hit songs. “Sometimes,” as one of Priest’s micro poems has it, “it is the book that opens you.”

Available September 9, 2025. PRE-ORDER NOW!

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