Night Lunch is a shapeshifting sonnet sequence set in the cold waters off the North Coast of Labrador. Reflecting Chaulk’s own experience, the speaker—a young deckhand on a freight and passenger ferry servicing isolated communities—endures long irregular work hours, weather, icebergs, and loneliness, all the while navigating the taut intersections of race, labour, class, and masculinity. That Chaulk has Inuit family in and from Labrador makes this debut poetic journey a cultural coming-home for the young deckhand, as chronicled in supple, powerful verse.
"Mike Chaulk’s debut collection infuses lyrics with workmanship, makes poetics of the utilitarian, the grit, and, as he frequently denotes it, the haunted." – Joan Sullivan, for The Telegram
"Having found his voice, readers should eagerly anticipate whatever Chaulk does next." – James K. Moran in Arc Poetry
"Night Lunch is a shimmering, sea-deep book about identity, family and territory, disguised as one of the most gorgeous books about work I have ever read." – Emma Healey, author of Stereoblind
"By threading a hidden world of 21st-century ship’s work into a fabric of heart-wrenching intimacy, Night Lunch gives a soft yet startling sheen to our worn-out ways of knowing the North." – John Nyman, author of Players
"Mike Chaulk has a talent for the torqued line, for bending his words and grammar at the precise point to thump the reader right square in the chest with the surprising depth of an image." – Zane Koss, author of Warehouse Zone
