Description
Poetry. In this breathtaking collection of poems, Pamela Porter invokes the twin mysteries of love and loss to illumine the heart burdened by grief, yet comforted and renewed by the beauty of the natural world. In the long poem "Atonement," Porter takes us into a human drama, rich with astonishments: "There was no snow, but you could say the snow buries everything, and you'd be right." In simple language at once lyrical and powerful, these poems are a meditation on vulnerability—"how fragile we are, a word shatters us"—on nature, where plum blossoms are "kissed eyelids, moths, / the night's numberless secrets, / little messengers that whisper, release," and on the heart's ability to mend, even under the most difficult circumstances. To love deeply, to grieve and, ultimately, to praise, carries us into the country of possibility, where we "begin again / to name each thing; Say water. Say breath. / Say empty. Say heart," and ultimately, arrive, changed and blinking in the light.
Author Bio
Patrick Lane has called Pamela Porter "a poet to be grateful for." Her work has earned many accolades, including the inaugural Gwendolyn MacEwan Poetry Prize, the Malahat Review's 50th Anniversary Poetry Prize, the Our Times Poetry Award for political poetry, the FreeFall Magazine Poetry Award, the Prism International Grand Prize in Poetry, the Vallum Magazine Poem of the Year Award, as well as the Raymond Souster and Pat Lowther Award shortlists. Her novel in verse, The Crazy Man, won the Governor General's Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award, the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award and other prizes. Both The Crazy Man and her later novel, I'll Be Watching, are required reading in schools and colleges across Canada and the U.S. Pamela lives on a farm near Sidney, B.C., with her family and a menagerie of rescued horses, dogs and cats.
Author City: SIDNEY, BC CAN