The Canadian writer Anne Michaels’s style is often praised for its lyrical qualities. It could be argued, though, that it exemplifies exactly what gives the word ‘lyrical’ a bad reputation. A line from the Canadian author’s 1999 poetry collection, Skin Divers, is representative: ‘We are sailors who wake when the moon intrudes/the smoky tavern of dreams.’ The hackneyed Romantic imagery, the enraptured tone: these have been out of favour in forward-thinking poetic circles since the early 20th century. 

For Michaels, however, the formula has proved to be a winning one. In addition to receiving numerous accolades for her poetry, she achieved huge sales and garnered many major literary awards with her debut novel of 1996, Fugitive Pieces. Her third novel, Held, has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. 

Michaels’s success may be explained by her willingness to tackle weighty subjects. Fugitive Pieces focused on the life of a Holocaust survivor. Her second novel, The Winter Vault (2009), addressed ecological destruction in postwar Egypt. Held takes in the trenches of the First World War, the refugee crises of