“I am responsible / for what happens, but if that’s true, / that means the beauty, too” writes Annick MacAskill in Votive, an assured yet introspective collection. […] MacAskill’s dynamic mastery of form, from the glosa to the sonnet, is so confident and seamless that [Votive] reads like a play. This quality turns the book itself into a kind of sacred text, a gorgeous and heartrending prayer for “the space between our secrets” — whether these secrets are whispers of a family member’s death from AIDS, a teeanger’s fliration with eating disorders, or a 35-year-old’s missed periods. In one of the titular “Votive” poems, MacAskill writes that she “saw the light, / and then was swallowed by its heat.” The light she uses to illuminate the subjects of this collection has the same searing, indelible quality.

—Jurors, Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award

Annick MacAskill’s Votive, the anticipated follow-up to her 2022 Governor General’s Award–winning collection Shadow Blight, combines themes of intimacy, privacy, eros, and queerness, while the transgressive and the religious infuse this collection. […] Traditions become cinematic and laughable, yet somehow, in MacAskill’s hands these rituals remain necessary and essential. If everything exists in context, as claimed, then the rituals on trial are framed by the twin pillars of devotional vow and wisdom. The subtlety of the subtext in Votive is indeed like smoke: you can wander through it effortlessly, but the scent of it remains in your clothes.

—Micheline Maylor, Quill & Quire