Read an Excerpt from ACCIDENTS AFTER HAPPENING, the New Poetry Collection by Robert Priest

Robert Priest returns with Accidents After Happening (ECW Press), a bold and expansive new poetry collection that explores the complicated beauty of what it means to feel, fully and completely. With the emotional range of a seasoned lyricist and the inventive curiosity of a born satirist, Priest invites readers into poems that are both sharply crafted and deeply human. Whether it's love, loss, anger, longing, or joy, each piece feels immediate and charged with intention.

Known for his ability to blend lyrical precision with cultural critique, Priest delivers poems that welcome readers in and challenge them to sit in with these lines. These pages carry an eclectic mix of poetic forms, from sonnets to ghazals to micro poems that are succinct and powerful. Priest's wit is razor-sharp but never cruel, his passion clear but never overbearing. His new poems are meant to be read aloud, shared, argued over, and remembered.

Robert Priest has long been regarded as a poet who connects with people where they live, think, and feel. His work has found its way into song lyrics, city sidewalks, public transit, and even political debate. In Accidents After Happening, he continues to prove that poetry can still surprise us, move us, and speak to the spirit of the times. This is a book for readers who believe that poetry should be felt as much as it is read.

Check out a special excerpt from this brand new title, right here on Open Book!

A Selection from Accidents After Happening by Robert Priest

Seventy 

The ageing continues 

or, worse, it doesn’t 

You think young

but the pops and cracks 

of knees and neck 

penetrate the mind

Those rivers of magic thought 

ride a new template now

thin-branching spider veins

The dancing you still want to do 

can no longer invulnerably

toss long locks 

or twerk the hips

without a week to recover

No matter how bad the eyes get 

the lines in your face deepen

You are still good at watching TV 

Your excellence in appreciating 

the beauty of the other

seems immortal

But the body you bared 

in careless glory

now sports blots and spots

where time spills its coffee 

on your fresh white pages

No need to shave those legs 

time has rubbed them smooth

and shiny

The phallus

once so ever ready to pop its hat

and bare the vertical grin is rarely summoned now

more a rumple than a stiltskin

Just as the larynx drops its register 

a couple of rungs

the plans and blueprints for new works 

multiply magically

Your mind is better than it ever was 

but ageing is never like

winter in retreat

it only goes deeper into winter 

until it doesn’t

The creased sheet of skin 

the catacombed bones 

the flecked embedding of 

eternal eyes

There’s no cursor in the palm 

to indicate just where you are 

in the lifeline

so you consider your blessings 

You catalogue your works

you scour your past

glad for what you no longer are

but scared for what you may soon be

Those moments so far off 

they might as well be never

are coming up

Time spent disbelieving will only use up 

that much more of the little left

Your complex chemistry 

your particles, your waves

everything that is not you about you 

will disperse

Once so distant 

it didn’t matter

something called death

is already eyeing your remaining ink 

its bony finger

eager for the keyboard 

keen to close the bracket 

and end the sentence 

with one last

black dot

Excerpted in part from Accidents After Happening by Robert Priest. Copyright © by Robert Priest, 2025. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com

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People’s poet Robert Priest has achieved bestseller status as both a songwriter and a poet. He lives in Toronto, ON.