“How to Hold a Pebble is a work of remarkable intellect. With empathy and playfulness, with startle and delight, Jaspreet Singh explores the fragility, beauty, and sorrow of the dreaming and waking worlds. These poems will continue to toll inside you. At times, they will turn you inside out.”
— Donna Kane, author of Orrery and finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award 

“As Rilke’s archaic torso was to Modernism, so is Jaspreet Singh’s pebble to our late-Anthropocene literary moment. Instead of beholding the high, White ideal of ‘pure’ stone, we must hold the earthy, water-worn pebble. It may or may not be too late to change our lives; still, we must take the pebble in hand, steward what remains of the multifarious planet Singh both mourns and celebrates. The poems keen and dance—and amazingly, offer comfort. Humor resides here, in the polyphonic play within and among languages, as well as vital guidance: ‘It [is]/impossible/to go back/the same way/we . . . entered’; ‘Keep creating disorder, live, do not simply versify the rhetoric of empire.”
— Natania Rosenfeld, author of Wild Domestic and The Blue Bed 

“Jaspreet Singh distills, reveals and honors our complex relationship with the planet, from habitation to occupation, from the exquisite to the aching. His poems are mercurial and revelatory, and are always things of deep beauty.”
— Anne Kennedy, author of The Sea Walks into a Wall and The Darling North 

“For those paying attention, Singh demonstrates the monumental task of mindfulness. He enacts the quiet appreciation of a pebble while facing up to the tragedies we have made of the world. Through lenses of science, art, and history, he stares down colonialism’s aftermath, environmental breakdown, and the collapse of intimacy. Despite often wishing to forget, this thoughtful poet holds to the necessity of being “a believer / in the task of witnessing.” Like him, we must resist the urge to blink.”
— John Barton, author of We Are Not Avatars and Lost Family 

“Singh’s collection is potent, truthful, and emotional. Sorrow and pain infuse narrations on colonization and climate change, and frustration accompanies musings on capitalism, but despite these heavy touchstones, the poems are not hopeless. Singh is able to expertly weave sorrow through lines of quiet joy, and feelings of unrest are considered only in equal measure with feelings of peace and contentment.”
— Fayth Simmons, Cloud Lake Literary (full review)

“How to Hold a Pebble elicits an appreciation of the everyday: moments and elements in our environment that are often overlooked.”
— Russul Sahib, This Magazine

“Innovative and searching, this rich collection will linger, will haunt, may gently sink beneath your wisdom like a pebble.”
— Jay Gamble, Alberta Views (full review)

“Effortlessly flows between the everyday and the planetary… revitalizing common words and phrases through intelligent, thoughtful, and unexpected explorations… [His] ability to use simple statements to expand the reader’s expectations and limitations opens his writing into realms of great complexity… [He] plays with the lines of his poetry on the page in a way that adds immense depth and dimension… There is a trust in the circular, and unspoken knowing that things keep going even after ending… His interest in the circularity of life culminates in the powerful image of Singh peeling an apple in ‘Mu’—a poem about [the remarkable Japanese film director Yasujirō Ozu].”
— Megan Nega, Freefall Magazine