Three copies of Toxemia are up for giveaway until the end of October.
*****
I wanted to find a cohesiveness in this list as much as I wanted to find a cohesiveness in the patterns of Toxemia when I was writing the book. Still, the fragments of books both past and present seemed to collide and pull apart when I tried to find a common thread. These books are ones that meant something to me when I was trying to make sense of the confusion of a difficult diagnosis. For a while it was difficult for me to read after the three brain injuries within 9 months (concussion, TIA, meningitis). I forgot the word for curtains. I forgot the word for kettle. I still cannot write a single sentence without correcting it over and over and over. It takes so much longer to read anything and so very much longer to write. There is never an uncorrected line. Some books here are good distractions—useful for when you want to put your hands in the dirt or for when you want to better understand the threads that hold our concentric circles together. Some make space for that weird space between fear, confusion, and comfort. Some are things that I read to my children that would get stuck in my head.
*
A Bubble, by Geneviève Castrée
The closest book to my heart in terms of what it is like to parent in an intense period of illness. It is a remarkable and sad children's board book with very few words. And one that I read knowing that I wasn't sure I would have enough strength to emulate when things felt dire. But the image of the bubble stuck with me and still sticks with me.
*
Saving Seeds: A Home Gardener’s Guide to Preserving Plant Biodiversity, by Dan Jason
Sometimes it's easier not to think of anything except tangible things like how seeds can be saved and the importance of heirloom crops to overall resilience. I've tried to build some personal resilience through dirt.
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The Lost Words: a spell book, by Robert MacFarlane
I lost words for a while and this book was brought into our house not long after. The children and I mostly spent time with the huge illustrations and thought about missing words in a dictionary. Expansive.
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By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
Prose or poem. Fiction or nonfiction. It blurs things up and stays blurred. I can't quite explain how beautiful and angry this book is.
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Alligator Pie, by Dennis Lee
We owned several versions of this. Truncated ones that place the title poem in hardback. A new one gifted when our eldest was born. My childhood copy with pages falling out and an inscription from my godfather. My daughters remembered the rhythm before they could speak the words. We have video of my youngest reading the book to her father. Words dance around with this one and it was my default baby present. I mailed copies during Covid shutdowns to new parents with small, worried inscriptions.
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Sound Poetry: A Catalogue, edited by Steve McCaffery and bpNichol
A book compiled and edited by Steve McCaffery and bpNichol for the Eleventh International Sound Poetry Festival held in Toronto October 14 – 21, 1978. It features essays and sound poems by various artists and contributors. It was typeset by the brilliant (now deceased) Canadian book designer and typographer Glenn Goluska. I find the form of this book as interesting as the content. As clever.
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A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators: Ontario and Great Lakes Edition, by Lorraine Johnson and Sheila Colla
I'm lucky enough to have a garden. I've developed stronger affinities and understanding of the plants in my backyard thanks to Lorraine Johnson and other Canadian writers focusing on the interaction and interplay of native species. I think about how closely aligned gardening is to a kind of dreaming and how all the tightly controlled gardens with invasive species are a sort of colonial imprint over top of what was already here. Like we're trying to match our childhood picture books of neat little gardens full of species that don't belong here. Like we've been doing it for generations. If you sit when gardening, it has less impact on the body. It is possible to come up with a rhythm that creates less harm.
*
Mauve Desert, by Nicole Brossard
I tried to read this in French during the pandemic. I'm bilingual enough that I should be able to. But the words in French ran away even more than the words in English. I lost words faster in the second language. I'd still like to read this in French. In English, in translation—a mixed genre text that translates and then untranslates. Sticks in my head.
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In this alchemy of anger and love, history and memoir, Christine McNair delves into various forms of toxicity in the body—from the effects of two life-threatening preeclampsia diagnoses to chronic illness, sexism in medicine, and the toll of societal expectations.
With catharsis and humour, Toxemia pieces together the complexities of identity, motherhood, and living in a body to reveal deeply recognizable raw truths. McNair captures the wrenching feeling of loss of control in the face of an overwhelming medical diagnosis and the small, endless moments in life that underscore it: worrying about mortality in the middle of the night, revolving medical appointments, self-doubt, and all the ways in which illness interrupts.
Toxemia unravels the toxicities that haunt the human body from within and without. Combining lyrical essays, prose poetry, photographs, and more, this hybrid work dips between the sacred and profane, exposing—and holding—some of our greatest fears.