UNMET, stephanie roberts
Biblioasis, 2025
UNMET, the second collection of poetry by stephanie roberts, asks readers to consider what sorts of things are “unmet” in their own lives. Perhaps it is to do with expectations, with how humans tend to disappoint themselves when they have expectations that don’t come to fruition. Perhaps we are not able to meet one another with clear communication, or see our desires blossom into something tangible. A reading of UNMET leaves a reader considering what parts of their life have yet to be discovered, and what has missed or lost and not yet been found.
The book hosts a series of titular poems (with the word “unmet” referenced) that are placed throughout the collection, so that the reader is never really allowed to stray from consideration of what it is that is missing. If humans live too much in the longing and seduction of what the future holds, they miss what’s going on around them. The climate crisis is present here, in poems like “Catch a Falling Knife,” as the speaker refers to forest fires in Nova Scotia and British Columbia, where “Western wildfires bathe British Columbia,/soap its armpits in smoke/and carelessness.” It is present, as well, in “Entanglement,” when roberts writes, “somewhere off the coast of orange county California,/the grandest animal that has ever lived swims tangled/in a fishing line,” and “in ottawa, on the fourth floor, near the rear atrium/of the canadian museum of nature, i sit/in the chamber of a blue whale’s heart, weeping.” The reader is left to ponder about whether it’s just too late, and whether other desired expectations can even be met if the world ends because of human greed. This idea can be shifted from macro to micro, from universal to particular, as it might be reflected in relationships between humans, or even between humans and the natural world.
There’s a distinct current of conversation in UNMET—between friends and lovers, between humans and the earth and water and sky, between past/present/future, between family members, and between well known musicians. In “Lady Fine is for Sugar,” the poet recollects a conversation with their grandmother, how she would say “You are well, not fine. Fine is for sugar!” and referencing the feminist strength of Cardi B who “levitated up a stripper pole/like a fuckin’ phoenix against the stench/of respectability politics.” Later, in one of the Unmet poems that appears early in the collection, roberts writes of how Marilyn Monroe “had this radiation,/nakedness was her tongue of fire,” but during church services, would force “smaller self against the world.” The reader is left thinking about how women can either increase or decrease their light for the good of themselves or others, and depending on what society requires for them to be successful. The notion of wearing masks, and of dialing down the intensity of desire or expectation even, is a way of not being true to self or identity. The systems within which we live, as humans—as women, as well—are ones that require study and navigation, but which also need to be subverted and rewritten.
A reader will find both glints of specificity and simplicity, as well as complexity in UNMET, just as they will in life’s journey. “Ordinary” times that existed before the arrival of Covid, seem to wobble and tip precariously, and roberts’s pandemic poems speak to the ways in which a current event or happening like “Monday quiet and empty streets,” nudge us into remembering “spring 2020/with all our suffering.” Loss was fiercely rooted in an unprecedented lockdown period when everyone was forced to go within, to the loss of the poet’s father, someone “taking leave in the midst of disaster.” Loss cannot be avoided, is woven into the way life shifts across the page of time and space, so the reader is reminded that the two ways of being—within presence and absence—are too intertwined to separate.
roberts’s poetic imagery is crystalline and vibrant, drawing the reader in with its uniquely surreal consistency. So many lines and phrases sing, including ones like: “In an empty apartment, you butter/A sandwich on both sides with daydreams,” “Wearing a lightweight twill jacket,/a woman walks out the door with her life,” and “A woman orders rose-shaped pink/pleasure with courage for tomorrow.” Lines like these are hypnotic, inviting readers to consider how a seemingly simple image can bloom into a brilliant metaphor.
Be assured: the sparkler on the cover is not the most important thing about stephanie roberts’s UNMET, but the image becomes a metaphor for the temporality of life’s journey. Humans strive so intensely for what lies ahead—maybe dreaming of “better times” or of expectations that might be met—but in so doing, often miss out on the reality that is life in the present. Nothing, no matter how much we might want it to be, is “perfect,” but if we focus more on the present instead of the past or future, we will ruin our lives “a number of times by wanting.” UNMET, when finished, leaves the reader with more questions and thoughts, evaluating longings and appearances, pondering how to best meet the world with thoughtfulness and compassion.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent books include The Pollination Field (Turnstone, 2025) and The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). She is the Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) and recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. Kim may be reached via her author website.
