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Poetry Canadian

The Scarborough

by (author) Michael Lista

Publisher
Vehicule Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2014
Category
Canadian
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781550653953
    Publish Date
    Dec 2014
    List Price
    $11.99

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Description

The Scarborourgh takes place over three days in 1992: Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday—the weekend 15-year-old Kristin French was abducted and murdered by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. In poems both opulent and stricken, ravishing and unflinching, Michael Lista—nine, at the time—revisits those dates, haunted by the horrifying facts he now possesses. Inspired, in part, by Dante’s Inferno, Virgil's tale of Orpheus’ descent into the underworld for Eurydice, as well as the Bernardo trial itself—where the judge ruled that the gallery could hear the video tapes of the crimes, but not see them—Lista’s poems adhere to a single rule: you cannot gaze at the beloved you seek to rescue. The Scarborourgh is book about Bernardo that doesn’t show us Bernardo, a conceptual project that ignores its concept. Shiveringly bold, it is a major achievement.

About the author

Michael Lista's reporting has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Walrus and Toronto Life. He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere, a collection of essays. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow, a finalist for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism, and the winner of the 2020 National Magazine Award Gold Medals for both Investigative Reporting and Long Form Feature Writing. His story, "The Sting," is being adapted into a television series for Apple TV+.

Michael Lista's profile page