Whether she is writing about the loss of her breast, or the loss of a friend, about the pleasure of time with her grandchildren or the passion of making love to her husband, Susan Downe writes with a surety of voice that comes from looking at the world and words with a gracious honesty. These spare and graceful poems are love stories; even the title sequence, about Downe's struggle with breast cancer, is a loving celebration of the beauty, the fullness, the irrefutable blessing of being alive.

Little Horse
has hitched itself
to the inside
of my skin, slip-
knitted to my nipple:

who would have guessed
its umbilical
genius — it means
to gallop far
and fast
and has tethered itself
to a mothering place.

"These poems are full of feeling but not in the least sentimental. They confront breast cancer and stare it down more lyrically than one would have imagined possible. This is a fine first book." --Maxine Kumin

Susan Downe lives in London, Ontario. She studied English and Philosophy as an undergraduate, at age forty she studied Gestalt theory and practice, and psychoanalysis, and practised in these fields for sixteen years. She is the daughter of a woman named Juanita Wildrose.OTHER PUBLISHED WORKSBetween This. . .And This (poems, SPANISH ONION PRESS, 1998)Little Horse (poems, BRICK BOOKS, 2004)

Susan Downe's profile page

"In these poems every word, every image, every line break pulses with vitality ... "--Heather Fitzgerald, Quill and Quire