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Kim Trainor's Karyotype (Brick Books) lives up to its arresting cover image, exploring in its title poem the imagined history of Loulan, a woman who lived four thousand years ago and whose preserved body was found in the sands of the Taklamakan Desert.

A collection that ranges from the minutiae of DNA to the enormity of the firebombing of the National Library of Sarajevo, Karyotype takes its readers from Montreal to Chinese deserts and back, ruminating on beauty, survival and violence. Don McKay called the collection, which is Kim's debut, "a crucial text in the work of reimagining what it is to be human".