Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman is an explosion of verse from one of the country’s hottest new poetic talents. Kaszuba’s work is a deftly subtle presentation of the visceral and the natural, combining a photographer’s eye for light and detail with the ponderings of a musing heart. Deeply embedded in the landscape of northern Ontario and the vast lakes, tough granite and majestic birch of that rich territory, she plumbs the depths of the land and of her soul, searching for the nutrients to sustain both. These poems beautifully address consciousness and spirituality as they are mirrored in the natural world; poems which in the storms and sunrises of life come to rest on the moments in childhood, friendships, and marriages which are the residue of memory. With spare language and a deft use of original imagery, Kaszuba captures a world both unique and universal, a sacred place with its own inherent ceremonies of reverence and forgiveness. Amid the tall grasses and gently lilting waves is a silence that speaks calmly in answer to our ceaseless barrage of questions and startles us with the realization that it has been there all along. Her verse surprises and with a burst of colours wakes you up as if from an enchanting dream, the taste of newly-kissed wisdom on your tongue.

Sophia Kaszuba has been published in Poetry Canada, Arc, The New Quarterly, Quarry, Event, Descant, Malahat, Dandelion and a host of other literary magazines. She won the League of Canadian Poets national contest in 1995 for "The Bruce Peninsula" and "The House of Lorca" was runner up in 1994 and published in the League's anthology Vintage in each year respectively. In 1996 she won the Grand prize in Sub-Terrain's national poetry contest for "Red and Black Chaos" as well as winning Arc's Poem of the Year with "Good Food."She has worked on Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman with respected poets Don Coles, Christopher Dewdney, Don McKay, Roo Borson, Barry Dempster and Tom Wayman. Kaszuba was born in Europe, grew up in a mining town in northern Ontario and now works as a computer librarian at the University of Toronto where she creates pages for the Internet. She has a B.A. in Islamic and Slavic Studies and a Masters in Information Science. She has published in noted academic journals on educational technology and history of medicine.

Like a Beast of Colours, Like a Woman is an explosion of verse from one of the country's hottest new poetic talents. Kaszuba's work is a deftly subtle presentation of the visceral and the natural, combining a photographer's eye for light and detail with the ponderings of a musing heart. Deeply embedded in the landscape of northern Ontario and the vast lakes, tough granite and majestic birch of that rich territory, she plumbs the depths of the land and of her soul, searching for the nutrients to sustain both.

These poems beautifully address consciousness and spirituality as they are mirrored in the natural world; poems which in the storms and sunrises of life come to rest on the moments in childhood, friendships, and marriages which are the residue of memory. With spare language and a deft use of original imagery Kaszuba captures a world both unique and universal, a sacred place with its own inherent ceremonies of reverence and forgiveness. Her verse surprises and with a burst of colours wakes you up as if from an enchanting dream, the taste of newly-kissed wisdom on your tongue.

Sophia Kaszuba's profile page