Natural Disasters

By Andrea MacPherson

In Vancouverite Andrea MacPherson's first volume of poetry, memories of love and loss intertwine on a poetic journey that covers both personal and family history from the dry golden plains of British Columbia's Interior and the salty spray of the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver to the history-laden countryside of Ireland. Pain, distance, and risk dictate the fates the relationships women in this family have with men and with one another. Whether it be marriage on a dare or the anguish of discovering infidelity, these poems map out the quiet territory of grief, of natural disasters, that binds the family together as events play themselves out over and over in succeeding generations. George McWhirter writes that the poems "capture the core of Andrea MacPherson's Scots-Irish Canadian heritage where even spite is a delight and dread, delight and devotion all feed on the lush B.C. cross-cross of cedar cloak on tartan and saffron lines." In one poem, MacPherson writes of a woman with "gravel under the cap / of her knee, / a reminder of a motorcycle crash / with her lover"; even the memory of a lover is associated with disaster and pain. Each poem serves as a kind of ultrasound that let's us peer into the heart of the matter to discover the shapes and movements associated with a particular memory of a family member or a former lover. The results are confessional and cathartic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 088878452X
• ISBN13: 9780888784520
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Dundurn Group (CA)
• Length: 128 Pages