The Lost Letters by Catherine Greenwood
$12.00 – $20.00
Nominated 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Finalist 2014 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize
Atmospherically light and stylistically expansive – poems that regard our givens as a gift.
8.75 x 6 Inches | 96 Pages
Publication Date: September 15, 2013
Trade Paperback ISBN: 9781926829852
Trade Paperback $20 | |
EPUB + PDF $12 |
At the centre of The Lost Letters is a sequence of radically diverse poems based on the story of Heloise and Abelard, truly lovers in a dangerous time, the twelfth century. The raw material is heavy, tension between flesh and spirit being the serious issue carried forward from the twelfth century into the twenty-first. But Greenwood’s deft and delicate handling of scenarios of love requited but balked becomes a perceptive reading — extraordinarily inventive and constantly surprising – of contemporary secular society.
The Lost Letters creates a world of wonder tinged with sadness on behalf of so much that goes unnoticed, whether it’s a bin of severed sows’ ears, a lizard tethered by its tail who severs it by self-amputation, or a down-and-out old schoolmate.
Praise for Catherine Greenwood:
“With discerning wit and a large range of styles and voices, she holds up each subject for contemplation as though it were a pearl. . . .” — Don McKay
“…at her best like Elizabeth Bishop on caffeine.” — Marilyn Bowering
Press Coverage:
The Lost Letters — The Malahat Review
Contraband Dreams: Review of Poetry Collections by Catherine Greenwood, Russell Thornton & David Seymour — Numéro Cinq
About the Author
Catherine Greenwood’s poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies; her first book, The Pearl King and Other Poems (Brick Books, 2004), was a Kiriyama Prize notable book. She works for British Columbia’s Ministry of Justice in Victoria, where she lives with her husband, the writer Steve Noyes.
