“Witness” is a fine word to describe Rosemary Griebel’s attitude to life, to writing. Not just witness in the sense of one who sees what anyone in the same place would see, but witness in the religious sense as well – one who understands and speaks of the miracles that linger in the day-to-day. An intensely reflective poet, Rosemary’s work calls on the stink of the pig sty, the luminous words of Basho, the hoarse prayers of Walt Whitman. Yes is Rosemary Griebel’s long-awaited first book, an intimate journey through love and loss, an affirmation of the importance of curiosity, passion and vision.

Rosemary Griebel's profile page

• Short-listed, Pat Lowther Prize
• Short-listed, Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry
• Short-listed, Gerald Lampert Prize for Poetry

Born in the farming community of Castor, Alberta, Rosemary Griebel grew up on the prairies. There she experienced nature as both immense and intimate. It’s common to say that there is little room to romanticize nature when the lives and deaths of animals are commonplace and all around you. Yet Rosemary, currently Special Projects Manager with the Calgary Public Library, where she has worked for 20 years, always knew experience as both something to be felt and something to be spoken of. Rosemary’s poems have been published on CBC’s radio program Anthology, in national journals, in the Calgary Transit’s “Poetry in Motion” series of in-vehicle posters, and in chapbooks by Leaf Press. In the past two years, her poems have won FreeFall magazine’s national poetry contest three times – in the second year of the contest, two of her poems, unknown to the judges to be by the same author, tied for first place.