This month poet, essayist, novelist and Department of English and Humanities Associate Professor B.W. Powe released his latest book, Ladders Made of Water.

Powe’s new work is a collection featuring poems, mini-essays, stories, parables, meditations on contemporary cinema and unfinished rock opera lyrics. Blending essaying and poetry, Powe says Ladders Made of Water was writing in an impressionistic, poetic, analogical, free associative approach to open up a dialogue with readers around the subjects the book considers – spiritual crises, the Russia-Ukraine War, the pandemic, environmental collapse and what he calls the implosion of our media systems. “It’s a thoughtful work that’s reflecting on the turbulence that we’re experiencing right now,” Powe says.  

The new work is notable too for being the first project published by Stream Elsewhere Press, a venture the associate professor founded in collaboration with Elliott Sheppard, a former York student of Powe’s, in order to explore the possibilities of self-publishing. “It’s a new way to get my material out there, bypassing conventional publishing houses, who often take years to edit and produce a book,” says Powe.

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