Keeping Count, M. Travis Lane's 18th collection of poetry, begins in the poet's favourite terrain: short, condensed lyric that focuses on the natural world. "But pull a thread: music turns," Lane writes, and the book progressively defamiliarizes the reader, moving from ecopoetry to a longer poetry of interiority in the second section, concluding with a final section that focuses on issues of mortality. As George Elliott Clarke has written so aptly, "If you have not read Lane before, prepare to travel: Like T.S. Eliot, she wants you to have a transporting experience in your imagination. If you have read Lane before, prepare for fresh astonishment. She is Homeric breadth and Sapphic brevity."
M. Travis Lane is Honorary President of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick and a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has published eleven books of poetry (including the forthcoming The Safety Net) and received numerous awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English Language Literary Arts.