The Rose in Winter is the final book by Tanya Kern, a superb and haunting lyric expression that seems to exist out of time. Her third book to be published by Ekstasis Editions was sent to her publisher two days before her tragic suicide, and so has both a sense of finality and incompleteness at the same time. Tanya Kern’s first book of poems, The Erotics of Memory, was a deep intimate statement, radiant with dark and rich sensuality. With her second book Ave she moved from the politics of the flesh to matters of the spirit. Erotic, surreal, thoughtful and intensely personal, the poems of Ave explode with a gentle ferocity. The Rose in Winter explores deeper wounds of desire and ecstatic grief in a startingly original way. In dynamic turns of speech, the compression of joy and pain, these poems express the agony and deep longing at the centre of the heart. The clarity of these final poems will be remembered.

Tanya Kern grew up in a hard rock town in northern Ontario. She lives in Metchosin, B.C., with her two daughters and several small animals. She has published a chapbook, Glory Days, with Reference West, and has been published in several magazines, including Event, The Fiddlehead Review, Midwest Poetry Review and Antigonish Review.

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