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SARAH ENS
Writer & Editor
News & Reviews: Services
BOOK REVIEW, Conrad Grebel Review
"Flyway is an invitation to examine the threads of storylines that bring us to any place we might call home. But it is the way that Ens invites her readers in that speaks to her strength as both writer and eco-thinker. In Flyway, Ens writes like a psalmist—for sound and beauty, yes, but primarily to speak with truth and directness into pain’s hollow spaces, and to be heard.—Sara Krahn
INTERVIEW, Turning Pages, 101.5 UMFM
LANDMARK POET WINS LITERARY AWARD, The Carillon
‘A FORMATIVE FAMILY LEGEND’, Free Press Community Review
POET SARAH ENS WINS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD, Canadian Mennonite
WINNER OF THE 2023 RELIT AWARD, Quill & Quire
BOOK REVIEW, Journal of Mennonite Studies
"Ens moves from grounding the family history in narrative to lifting it by the poetic devices of white space, line breaks, and the structure of open field. The result is highly effective: the details and gaps work in tension, the narrative like lines on the hydro pole that hold the lyricism, the poetry like birds rising from the wire, airborne."—Connie Braun
STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! TAZI RODRIGUES' BOOK RECOMMENDATION, The Fiddlehead
"On a line level, this book of poetry is full of sound and echoes and navigates incredibly well through different forms. Ens threads the poetry with questions that reverberate throughout the book, holding space for its many themes. Flyway also covers wide expanses of time and space quite deftly as it explores a multigenerational narrative arc while keeping the reader and poetry grounded."—Tazi Rodrigues
BOOK REVIEW, Mennonite Quarterly Review
"Centering this Mennonite resettlement narrative within the tallgrass prairie, as well as centering the voices of women family members, she tells a coherent story of the many kinds of loss involved in migration... It is the situating of this story within the tallgrass prairie that brings a new perspective and grounds the narrative in something earthy and real. The way the birds, grasses, and environment are interwoven throughout the narrative brilliantly connects this family myth to present-day reality."—Alyssa Sherlock
BOOK REVIEW, Canthius
"Life is primarily about relationships—with each other, with the land. [Flyway] thinks about what happens when those connections are severed. How do you find home? How do you rebuild with what is left? In the section 'Un / Settling', Ens writes 'Aula Aunfong ess schwoa / All beginnings are hard'—and ultimately, the book ends with hope, as 'Here / is still something / of home'."—Jesse Holth
WOMEN ASKING WOMEN: JUDY LEBLANC AND SARAH ENS, All Lit Up
FIVE RESPONSES TO WOMEN TALKING, Canadian Mennonite
BOOK REVIEW, Heritage Posting
"Asking questions that both clarify and expand ideas of land, identity and migration, this poem is a masterpiece in story and song, healing and hope, and the memory that is aflight within us all."—Nadya Langelotz
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD, Manitoba Book Awards 2022
A 'BEST OF' LIST OF 2022 CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS, DUSIE Press
BOOK REVIEW, Mennonite Historian
"Ens's imaginative telling, supported by memories and thorough research, does what good historical fiction does: it puts flesh on history by bringing the stories of particular people to life. [And] her attentiveness, informed by research, results in questions that create an opening for the reader—an invitation to also ask, look, and listen."—Joanne Epp
THE SARAH ENS INTERVIEW, The Miramichi Reader
FALL 2022 LIST OF BOOKS & RESOURCES, Canadian Mennonite
INTERVIEW, Schmoozing with Poets
MY STUDIO: SARAH ENS, Turnstone Press
BOOK REVIEW, Anabaptist World
"Ens creates a tallgrass psalmody, observing migratory birds nesting in the Manitoba prairie — “I will try to tell the truth/to the blood feather tangled in the reeds” — interspersed with the story of her Oma’s flight (1929-1945) from Ukraine to Poland to Slovenia to Germany, here imagined by her granddaughter with the help of family history and letters. The resultant poem, “Flyway,” stretching over 100 pages, reflects in its poetic line the psychological chaos. In the final psalmody, Oma’s question, “How do you remember home?” becomes an anguished cry from the poet’s vantage point."—Raylene Hinz-Penner
INTERVIEW, Speak Up! CJSF 90.1 FM
BOOK REVIEW, rob mclennan's blog
"This is a collection of being and becoming, writing out what is lost, gained and abandoned; writing out what is inherited, and what can’t help but be carried across not only distances, but generations... In many ways, her lyric is akin to Cooley, writing a progression across the larger story of the rippling effect of emigration across two or three generations."—rob mclennan
QUATRAIN QUESTIONS: SARAH ENS, Turnstone Press
MASSY INTERVIEWS / SARAH ENS, Massy Arts
BOOK REVIEW, Winnipeg Free Press
"Throughout, the speaker is careful to not let her desire "to be absolved in the homecoming/ ... / to be undone & remade, like my body is not a memory/ I keep confessing into some promise of land" to paper over the darkness of the migration story, but she holds all the context with tenderness and a grounded, careful touch."—melanie brannagan frederiksen
BOOK REVIEW, Marrow Reviews
"'Birds, like poems, follow the river'– but one instance of a potent statement, set singularly on the page, a space that allows breath, the profound pacing of silences, holding the gaze with awe."—Catherine Owen
POET MEDITATES ON FAMILY HISTORY IN NEW BOOK, Free Press Community Review
INTERVIEW, Prairie Writers, CJOB
ENS PENS SECOND POETRY BOOK, The Carillon
INTERVIEW, The Weekend Morning Show (Manitoba), CBC Radio One
5 MENNO LIT BOOKS TO LOOK FOR IN SPRING 2022, Mennotoba
SHORTLISTED FOR LANSDOWNE PRIZE FOR POETRY, Manitoba Book Awards 2022
BOOK REVIEW, Arc Poetry Magazine
"In The World Is Mostly Sky, Ens gives us rite and sacrament, space to spread wings, expanses to “measure us / immense” (“Astronomical”). The world of sky is one that is breathtaking, and heartrending."—Frances Boyle, Arc Poetry Magazine
BOOK REVIEW, The River Volta Review of Books
"The World Is Mostly Sky is a stunning collection full of vibrancy and teeming with tenderness. Ens’s poetry first soars through childhood nostalgia and anguish, dives through thick waters of heartbreak and longing, and finally crashes up through clouds of young adulthood with ice coffees raised like chalices to the sky."—Delane Just, The River Volta Review of Books
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE GRADUATES HONOURED FOR RESEARCH, University of Saskatchewan, College of Arts & Sciences, News & Events
CURRENT CREATOR: THE WORLD IS MOSTLY SKY, The Locality Project
BOOK REVIEW, Heritage Posting
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"The constant motion of body and spirit, in and out of each other, this is the thread throughout this marvellous book."—Patrick Friesen
SHORTLISTED FOR MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR, Manitoba Book Awards 2021
BOOK REVIEW, Herizons
"These poems draw heavily on faith and relationships. Female friendship is key—as long and sustaining as prairie roots—and exerts a far more powerful force on the speaker's life than the ex-lovers who also pop up throughout the collection. ... The World Is Mostly Sky is a beautiful debut.
—Kerry Ryan, Herizons
12 OR 20 QUESTIONS WITH SARAH ENS, rob mclennan's blog
WINNER OF THE GENERAL MARKET NONFICTION, SPECIALTY BOOK WORD AWARD, Word Guild Awards 2021
QUATRAIN QUESTIONS: SARAH ENS, Turnstone Press
DEBUT POETRY COLLECTION CONSIDERS TRANSITIONS UNDER THE PRAIRIE SKY, Prairie Books NOW
"Sarah Ens’s first collection of poetry, The World Is Mostly Sky, is a closely observed exploration of her rural Prairie roots, as well as the landscape’s—and the sky’s—changing physical and emotional resonances."—melanie brannagan frederiksen
NIMBLE. PRAIRIE. CELEBRATIONS. SARAH ENS'S THE WORLD IS MOSTLY SKY, Good. Short. Reviews. The Anti-Languorous Project
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"Ens celebrates both people and prairie, complicated as each are, through her nimble pen and apt understanding of just what each poem needs."
—Allie McFarland
LAUNCHPAD: THE WORLD IS MOSTLY SKY BY SARAH ENS, 49th Shelf
TO COMBAT COVID-19 ISOLATION, USASK MFA IN WRITING STUDENTS LAUNCH VIRTUAL VARIETY SHOW, University of Saskatchewan, College of Arts & Sciences, News & Events
"FLORICULTURE V. 2" DIGITAL BROADSHEET, Turnstone Poetry Youtube Channel
5 QUESTIONS WITH POET SARAH ENS, Mennotoba
"FLORICULTURE" DIGITAL BROADSHEET, Turnstone Poetry Youtube Channel
SARAH ENS' AMAZING YEAR, University of Saskatchewan, MFA in Writing News
EXPOSED: AN INTERVIEW WITH SARAH ENS, The New Quarterly
SUPPORT THE RIVER VOLTA WITH ORIGINAL TYPEWRITTEN HAIKU BY SARAH ENS, University of Saskatchewan, MFA in Writing News
WHAT IS SARAH ENS READING?, The New Quarterly
I DO BELIEVE IN PRAYER BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN POETRY, The Canadian Mennonite
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