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a keeper of things forgotten, a vase / for pictures made by words, a riverbed / for the stories you tell, an earthen silhouette / of a child
With vivid imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish McIntyre’s words breathe life. Her richly lyrical phrases capture both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural working-class community, anchored by the magical bond between a young girl and her grandfather.
Way’s Mills, Quebec, is the setting for these poems, although as with Mark Twain’s Mississippi, physical place becomes a place in the heart in this elegy for lost ancestral farms. Standish McIntyre gives voice to the unspoken, shining a light into the dark corners of our collective memory to reveal an indelible past that gleams with clarity, empathy, and humanity. Taking seed in the dilapidated barns and warm sunlit rooms of Standish McIntyre’s personal history, these poems weave a filigree of well-worn remembrances and time-honoured treaties of the self, half forgotten yet ever lingering.
Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, this collection holds a sweeping narrative power that will stay with you long after the last line.
“Tanya Standish McIntyre is ‘a keeper of things forgotten.’ A haunting debut
collection.” Louise Abbott, author of The Heart of the Farm
“Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, calling to mind Dillard in an arching
narrative.” David Gow, award-winning Canadian playwright
“Barns and sheds, old chesterfields, pond ice, damselflies, graveyards and ghosts – rarely
have these words been so evocative, so glorious. From Quebec’s Eastern
Townships comes an arresting new voice.” Shelley Pomerance, arts journalist
“With
gorgeous imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish
McIntyre captures both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural
working-class community.” Carolyn Rowell, TILT Writer’s Cooperative