At the heart of this luminous collection, Pilling's fifth, is a searing sequence of poems tracing a family's grief at the suicide of a girl on the threshhold of womanhood: daughter, sister, niece, about-to-be-aunt. Yet in these, as in all of the poems, what comes through is a passionate affirmation of life, of beauty in the world, of human dignity and human compassion. Pilling's voice is warm, forgiving, and inclusive; her world becomes, briefly, ours.

Marilyn Gear Pilling lives in Hamilton, Ontario, although her roots are in the East Wawanosh area of Huron County, which has been a powerful presence in her life and work. She is the author of three collections of short fiction (most recently On Huron’s Shore, 2014), five collections of poetry, and one chapbook, Estrangement (2017). Pilling has won and/or placed in forty-five national contests for poetry, literary nonfiction and fiction, including the CBC literary awards, the Western Magazine Awards and Descant’s award for Best Canadian Poem. Her work has been broadcast on the CBC.

Marilyn Gear Pilling's profile page

“I can’t think of a better metaphor for poetry (or, more particularly, its effect on readers) than the one at the heart of Marilyn Gear Pilling’s latest poetry collection.”

The New Quarterly