Geraldine Moodie, granddaughter of Susanna Moodie, was the first woman to own photography studios on the Canadian prairies and create an extensive oeuvre. This collection of poetry casts light on Geraldine’s life, using her photographs and biographical details available through letters, newspaper articles, and family interviews collected by curator Donny White. With those fragments, the poet imagines the woman behind the lens and considered possible motives for her decisions and actions. It is worth noting that Geraldine owned three photography studios (Battleford, Maple Creek, and Medicine Hat), raised six children, and followed her husband, J.D., to eight different Northwest Mounted Police postings from the Prairies to Northern Canada. The one constant in her peripatetic life was her art—drawing and photography—and what she accomplished is remarkable.

Rebecca Luce-Kapler has published over forty poems in a number of literary journals across Canada and is author of The Gardens Where She Dreams. Her book, Writing With, Through, and Beyond the Text: An Ecology of Language, has been used in numerous academic contexts. Currently, she is the Dean of the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University in Kingston, and finds that her work as a poet keeps her connected to beauty and calm, as does her home on a lake north of Kingston, Ontario.

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