Threaded through this first collection are a sweetness and a hope which linger in spite of the dark wash of loss the poems bravely reconnoitre.

Seeking out enduring moments of beauty and human connection that redeem difficult remembering, Giacometti’s Girl attests to the ability of love, along with the passage of time, to heal and to allow for forgiveness and celebration.

Davies understands what makes people tick. Interweaving decades-old memories with some as recent as yesterday, she conjures vivid and believable portraits of family members and friends both living and departed, and of strangers both real and imagined. In language refreshingly direct, unforced and honest, she shares what she has lived and observed. Story, physical description, and conversation are the foundations upon which she builds her poems. Whether they depict a mother’s dementia, the tragic wake of suicide, the wonderment of first love or the “shocking thrill” of “widowed old age loving”, Davies finds phrases and images which allow us to register what we may have passed over, or to recognize some of the things we’ve experienced in a deeper or different way.

Sandra Davies is a retired palliative care nurse who grew up in Toronto and has been writing poetry since childhood. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science in nursing, and for the next forty years she practised nursing in Toronto, India (Madya Pradesh), and Kingston, her home since 1989. Since retiring she has participated in creative writing workshops and had poems published in The New Quarterly, CV2, and A Kingston Poet’s Gallery. She has two adult sons and four beloved grandchildren.

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