Stones Call Out - Softcover

Porter, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550503405 ISBN 13: 9781550503401

Publisher: Coteau Books, 2006

Synopsis

A powerful first collection of poems which bear witness to difficult lives in Latin America, in the mining towns of the USA, in prairie families ruined by hardship and losses and incest. Pamela Porter's poetry has both gravitas and grace, it speaks about important matters beyond the personal and domestic concerns of the writer herself, yet many of the poems fall within the personal narrative tradition. These poems are earthy and metaphysical, personal and universal, geographically and historically diverse. The details are beautifully, often hauntingly, realized. Porter keeps her own sense of outrage in check, creating startling and invasive images and refusing to trespass by bludgeoning or imposing a response on the reader. There's an undercurrent of hope, of confidence in individuals' capacity to survive and make meaningful lives in the wake of tragedy. We come to the end of the book disturbed, deeply stirred, but not devastated.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Pamela Porter’s poetry has both gravitas and grace, it speaks about important matters beyond the personal and domestic concerns of the writer herself, yet many of the poems fall within the personal narrative tradition. These poems are both earthy and metaphysical, personal and universal, geographically and historically diverse. The details are beautifully, often hauntingly, realized.

Through it all, the poet resists the temptation to judge or instruct. Readers are allowed to see, hear, and experience disparate lives as though firsthand, then draw their own conclusions. Porter keeps her own sense of outrage in check, creating startling and invasive images and refusing to trespass by bludgeoning or imposing a response on the reader. Many of the poems have an elegiac tone, a sense of space and room to breath even when the material is most wrenching.

There is nothing raw or unresolved or wounding here – astounding in a first collection. The voice and vision seem unfailingly compassionate, deeply empathetic yet reconciled to and even celebratory of the realities of the human condition. There’s an undercurrent of hope, of confidence in individuals’ capacity to survive and make meaningful lives in the wake of tragedy. We come to the end of the book disturbed, deeply stirred, but not devastated.

About the Author:

Pamela Paige Porter is an award-winning poet and juvenile fiction author. Her poetry has been published in periodicals across Canada and the United States and beyond, from Grain, Descant and Arc, to the Atlanta Review, North American Review and Storie from Rome, Italy. She has twice been a finalist in the CBC/Saturday Night Canadian Literary Awards and has been on the shortlist for the Pushcart Prize, the Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and the National Poetry Series manuscript competition in Princeton, New Jersey. Stones Call Out is her first poetry book publication. Her free-verse children’s book The Crazy Man is a finalist for the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Pamela Porter has also lived in Texas, Louisiana, Washington, Montana and Saskatchewan where her husband's family has operated a family farm near Weyburn for generations. She got her undergraduate English degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She currently lives in Sidney, British Columbia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coteau Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1550503405
• ISBN 13: 9781550503401
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 73