How the Light is Spent is a meditation on love and loss, on time and tempo. From the Drumheller Badlands to Istanbul, Turkey and back to Canada, Gail Sidonie Sobat scores the light and the shadow of human relationships, composing an etude of how best to mark our allotted time. The first section, “Badlands,” constructs a narrative of a young couple in love who are eventually divided by war and tragedy, their story so poignant it never quite leaves the remaining pages. The middle collection of poems, entitled “Sailing to Byzantium,” sweeps readers across the ocean and drops them squarely into the heat and noise of an Istanbul market. A piercing impression of longing permeates this section, troubling the finality of the first narrative, as if the lover’s grief is embodied, restless. The third section, “How the Light is Spent,” replaces the exotic locale of the mid-section with more familiar scenes, at least for Canadian readers. The collection ends with a final cadence of poems revealing an almost familiar soul who attempts to “cheat autumn,” all the while dancing onwards with time. Gail Sidonie Sobat’s work has been variously described as “beautiful…and concise…at times sexy, and always quite human.”

Gail Sidonie Sobat is an award-winning author for children, teens and young adults. Her novel, Gravity Journal, was a 2009 White Pine Honour Book, a Moonbeam Gold Award winner, and was nominated for the 2011 Stellar Award. Gail is also the creator and coordinator of YouthWrite, camps for kids who love to write, and of SWYC (Spoken Word Youth Choir). Not With a Bang is her ninth book.

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