The House the Spirit Builds
CBC Books | | Posted: July 26, 2019 8:36 PM | Last Updated: August 7, 2019
Lorna Crozier, photography by Peter Coffman, Diane Laundy
Following the success of her bestselling 2015 gift book The Wild in You: Voices from the Forest and the Sea, renowned poet Lorna Crozier offers another masterful collection of poems inspired by nature, this time set in the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve in Southeastern Ontario.
One of eighteen biosphere reserves in Canada, the Frontenac Arch stands at the junction of the Canadian Shield and the St. Lawrence Valley and features some of Central Canada's most characteristic landscapes as well as some of its most revered cultural heritage, all sensitively evoked by Lorna Crozier's poetry and the photographs of Peter Coffman and Diane Laundy.
The House the Spirit Builds explores human-crafted and natural landscapes from a variety of angles. An image of a slice of light falling across a tablecloth, three oranges in a red bowl, a black beetle on a leaf: poems that speak of moments "when the dragonfly lands and grips the skin / on the back of your hand" or "rain stops falling / but / hangs around / like the shape of lust / in bedsheets"— the impressions and expression vary, but all are informed by sense of place and aim to take understanding to a more visceral plane. (From Douglas & MacIntyre)
The House the Spirit Builds is available in Sept. 2019.
Lorna Crozier is a Governor General's Literary Award-winning poet who has written more than 15 books.
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