Third Place Winner, Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence In Poetry
Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

In this powerful, intimate collection, a young woman travels between Paris and New York to pursue a career in modelling. Alternating between the world of fashion, where "it's no longer enough / that the sample size fits," and the eponymous Program, a place to "discover / what's underneath," Jones's debut collection pulls the reader deep into the realms of psychiatric care and romantic relationships and probes a long tradition of female suffering.

Taking inspiration from New York school poets such as Frank O'Hara, Jones employs an unadorned and at times funny narrative style that also calls to mind the work of Sheila Heti and Sally Rooney. Summoning images from the worlds of fashion, art, and therapy, and exploring the allure of pain and of suffering, The Program is a compelling debut about how we are seen, and how we see ourselves.

About the Author
Megan Fennya Jones's poetry has appeared in publications across North America including Poetry Northwest, Room Magazine, and PRISM International, in the anthology The City Series Number One: Vancouver, and the chapbook Normal Women. She lives in Vancouver.

Reviews
"I adore this book, its narrative, its voice, its struggle. Jones tells a familiar story of the body being used, with some complicity and ambition on the part of the body's owner, but as the poems go on, the divide between the body and the voice grows. The craft and care of the poems returns to the thoughts now, and the thoughts then, even as it unspools its speaker's glamorous and unglamorous travels. The Program attains a different beauty, more enduring than a photo shoot." -- Ed Skoog, author of Travellers Leaving the City
"The Program has a cutting, deceptively breezy sincerity, like the wind full of needles. With a crafted effortlessness, Jones pins down the grotesquely gendered experience of being seen and acted upon as a beautiful object in the world. These poems not only probe the meaning of being (or being used as) a model, but they also transform the noun into a verb - refashioning the narrative around sickness, pain, healing, and survival while letting girls keep their imperfect, messy humanity." -- Domenica Martinello, author of All Day I Dream about Sirens


Awards
Winner of Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence In Poetry Third Place 2023 (Canada). Short-listed for Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 2023 (Canada).



Book Information
ISBN 9781773102528
Author Megan Fennya Jones
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Goose Lane Editions
Publisher Goose Lane Editions
Weight(grams) 122g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 6mm