The early car's mine.
I leave before the day
puts hardware on;
ride east all the way.

I leave before the day
abandons slow calm.
Ride east all the way,
and now a storm

abandons slow calm.
We pass the bridge
and now a storm
has torn the sky's edge.

— from Open Letter

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden's second book of poetry, Clinic Day, (choreo)graphs the experiences and thoughts and feelings of three characters (The Secretary, The Surgeon, and a wanderer named - not inaptly - Blake), who perform a pas de trois of yearning and loss and occasional moments of grace. If at times the dance has a fevered quality, it is also, always, electrically alive and exquisitely shaped. In the clinic that lies at the heart of this unravelling day there is no panacea and no placebo, but there are the consolations of attending with clarity and honesty, and the healing powers of image and metaphor and wit.

Essayist, reviewer, columnist, and poet, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden’s poetry has appeared in two Insomniac Press anthologies (Beds and Shotguns and The Last Word) and Vintage96, a League of Canadian Poets anthology published by Quarry Press. Her poems have also been published in magazines and journals including Shift, Alphabet City, and The Globe & Mail. She was a winner in the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Contest in 1996, and one of her essays was shortlisted for the 1998 Canadian Literary Awards. Bryden explores her love of the Russian language and Russian poets in her poetry. She poses questions about the impact of the past on identities in the present, especially for the immigrant from of a diverse cultural heritage living “in between” cultures.

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden's profile page

"Bryden's sublime and seamless weave of three perspectives: social, medical and mystical; on the work of a downtown hospital makes this book not so much a collection than a unified vision." - Tanis MacDonald, The Malahat Review

"Posed minuets, where layers of dispossession erode to reveal lost foundations of interconnectedness." -Veronica Marmoreo, Word: Torontos Literary Calendar