Books·How I Wrote It The Canadian poet and author talks to CBC Books about The Reign, a poetry collection that tells a novel-in-verse tale set within a small New Brunswick community.Poetry collection The Reign functions as a “novel in verse”Luke Beirne · CBC Books · Posted: Dec 05, 2025 8:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 16 minutes agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.The Reign is a book by Shane Neilson. (icehouse poetry, Zee Neilson)The Reign, Shane Neilson’s poetry collection, tells a continuous story about a community in New Brunswick that was expropriated to build a military base, focusing primarily on two characters: an intellectually disabled boy and a deer who is also an industrial tycoon.“I honestly wanted the book to be aggressively weird,” Neilson said. “I wanted it to be strange because I am that way. Like, I’m really weird.”Neilson is a New Brunswick-born poet, physician and an assistant professor at McMaster University’s Waterloo campus. He has published more than 20 books, including What To Feel, How To Feel, which was a finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for nonfiction.He describes himself as a neurodivergent artist, a fact that informs his work.Neilson said the writing is an unusual combination of prose and poetry and that its unique structure is significant to him. I wanted it to be strange because I am that way. Like, I’m really weird.- Shane NeilsonLISTEN | Shane Neilson on Information Morning:Information Morning – Saint John11:16The Lorenzo Society Series: Author Shane NeilsonNeilson grew up in Oromocto, N.B., which was created as a community to house those unhoused when CFB Gagetown was built.The Reign draws from different elements of the author’s life. “The book is concerned with a particular time in a particular place. It’s concerned with 1950s New Brunswick and the area that was eventually expropriated to become CFB Gagetown, and it focuses even more upon a particular community called Enniskillen, which no longer exists.”Words in spaceNeilson said that poetry must be read very differently from narrative or prose because of the nature of the form. “Words in time is narrative but poetry is words in space,” he said. He also said that the structure of poems urges the reader to engage with them differently than stories.”Poetry is more imagistic. Poetry is more relating the first line to the last line, picking out individual words and gaining insights on their meaning. “That’s what a poetic understanding of the medical encounter can give. It’s a series of bursts of insights that are kind of strung together like beads. Not necessarily beads on a chain, just beads kind of thrown on a table,” Neilson said. Words in time is narrative, but poetry is words in space.- Shane Neilson”You can try and make sense. It’s a process of asking questions about what these things mean as opposed to trying to create a long cohesive story.”Neilson also said that in poetry, meaning can also sometimes be found by readers before even the poet themself.”I was in Saint John, reading, and some questions came from the audience and they pieced together things I didn’t even know,” Neilson said. People in different parts of the country also find different meanings, making the readings more powerful to him. Neilson said that when he reads in New Brunswick, the lived experiences of the people he reads to cause them to come up with interpretations that have great relevance and significance. “So I’ll read this book in New Brunswick, and then I’ll read it outside of it. And the experience is completely different.”A hybrid novelThough it is a poetry collection, Neilson described it as a “hybrid-novel,” which tells a continuous story about a recurring cast of characters. Certain poems in the collection are written from different characters’ perspectives. The book primarily follows the story of two characters: Willard, an intellectually disabled boy, and Casey, a deer who is also an imposing industrialist. In a novel, the style of writing itself often changes to reflect specific characters, Neilson said. To try to do a similar thing in poetry, he played with form when writing poems reflecting different characters. I do conceive it as a kind of hybrid novel.- Shane NeilsonVisually, the poems take different shapes representing different characters’ personalities or physical beings, giving the reader a sense of the character themselves.”Form changes based on the characters,” he said, because “I really wanted people to have different voices.” Neilson said that he also tried to write the actual history of the community at the heart of the collection as he gathered records from the expropriated locals and their descendants. Form changes based on the characters.- Shane NeilsonThe Reign is “focused on that time, that place, a particular man who was left behind because he was forgotten and not needed and had no descendants and was old and, of course, despised in his community for being different and disabled.”‘I wanted it to be strange’The Reign is described as an “utterly unique modern fairy tale” and Neilson said he wanted the book to represent himself.”I don’t know of any other neurodivergent creator who is letting the weirdness be that aggressive out there,” he added.”I guess I don’t think like other people,” he said. “I interject, I go off on tangents. I wanted the book to formally reflect that strangeness, that difference, and I wanted to celebrate it at the same time.”WATCH | Neilson’s collection on “neurofatherhood”:Cambridge author’s book on ‘neurofatherhood’ nominated for Governor General’s Literary AwardsABOUT THE AUTHORLuke Beirne is a researcher at CBC News in Saint John. He is also a writer and the author of three novels. You can reach him at luke.beirne@cbc.ca.
N.B. poet’s latest collection is ‘aggressively weird’
