Rove
by Laurie D Graham
Paperback (Strike Fire/Poetry)
8.5" x 5.25" · 88 pages
Release Date: September 2013
ISBN 9781926710235
This fast paced book of poetry explores the ways we can exist meaningfully, through the stories, experiences, and memories of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. This work looks at the colonial settlement of the prairies through the lens of a single family line. From prairie life, Rove then enters the vast and monotonous suburban environment. Laurie D Graham also recounts an experience with memory loss as a means of understanding the evolving relationship between a mother and a daughter.
What might best define Rove, is its compelling voice and the breadth of its vision. Graham gives us a voice that speaks to the reader directly and simply, and she articulates at various points a large swath of historical time in order to create a picture of a place, or simultaneous places and how they exist together in the mind, memory, and make-up of an individual.
“Rove is a stunning long poem in a manner reminiscent of Jan Zwicky and Robert Kroetsch that combines meditation with compact sensory impressions. Its language resonates through the twists and turns of immigrants’ lived stories. Innovate, lyrical, wise, and moving, Rove considers and details the surface changes of a region in western Canada, evoking a strong sense of place. With ideas and characters returning like refrains, there is a strong idiosyncratic tone, and the final third is powerful in its melancholy mood.”
Laurie D Graham
Laurie D Graham grew up in Sherwood Park, Alberta, and now lives in Toronto, where she is a poet, teacher, and assistant editor of Brick, A Literary Journal as well as an instructor at Humber College. Her poems have appeared in Carousel, CV2, Event, FreeFall, The Malahat Review, Room, Other Voices and subTerrain.
Blog » lauriedgraham.wordpress.com
