The mythopoetic seasonal life of islanders and their love of being islanded, are captured with luminous clarity in Fertig’s exceptional new book; her first in 14 years.

"I have always been struck by three qualities in Mona Fertig’s poetry: a sensuousness, an honouring of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes awkwardly real world at the poet’s feet, and a spiritual density that cracks through anywhere. Mona has one of the strongest voices among our poets."––John Lent

Through the lyrical, the local and the natural world mixed with the pepper of folklore and the salt of the personal, remarkable shifts of the first person plural and the omniscient narrator are woven. The intuitive exchange between sorrow and delight are deeply rooted in the poems’ emotional wisdom and rhythm. Beauty and hope abound. Three sections open the collection: Village Life, Huddling, Joies de’ Livre, and three powerful long socio-political poems, The Weather is Political, Sleepless in Strathcona and This is Paradise, complete the book. “The island felt timeless, a place where happiness could exist.”

Mona Fertig is a poet, publisher, editor and founder of The Literary Storefront, Canada’s first literary centre (1978-1985) and Mother Tongue Publishing. She grew up in Vancouver’s Kitsilano and Burnaby and attended the Vancouver School of Art. She has been writing poetry since she was a teenager and has given hundreds of readings in many cities and towns across Canada as well as NYC and San Francisco. Her books of poetry include Mouth for Music (1979), 4722 Rue Berri (1986), Sex, Death & Travel (1998) and The Unsettled (2010), well as The Life and Art of George Fertig (2010). Fertig edited the anthologies Love of the Salish Sea Islands, The Summer Book, and 111 West Coast Literary Portraits (2012). She assisted in curating the George Fertig and Jack Akroyd exhibitions at the Burnaby Art Gallery, and the Unheralded Artists of BC Exhibition at Mahon Hall. She was a founding member of the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets, The Federation of BC Writers, the BC Book Prizes, and has been the BC/Yukon Rep of The Writers’ Union of Canada and P.E.N. Canada. In 2016, the Vancouver Public Library honored her as a Literary Landmark. She has lived on Salt Spring Island with her husband Peter Haase, for over 30 years, where they raised two children.

Mona Fertig's profile page