Becoming the Harvest invites the reader to contemplate the fierce transformative initiations of aging and death. Le Bel takes readers through a poignant poetic journey inspired by her intimate experience with the deaths of her loved ones, as well as her acceptance, and often delight, in her own aging body.

Her end of life education began fifteen years ago when she cared for an older sister diagnosed with a terminal illness. It was a soulful time, an unexpected threshold into the beauty and sorrows of living and dying. She sweetened and sharpened her views on aging and death, finding hope and nuance amid the stark reality.

With an unflinching and at times playful eye, Le Bel challenges our cultural stories about the end of life, rejecting the merciless stereotype of the Grim Reaper, and poking gentle fun at our common euphemisms for the end. These are poems to welcome the end years, to claim them, touch them, lightly and deeply. To see aging and death not as the enemy but as a call to live life more fully, to love more thoughtfully.

Pauline Le Bel is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and author of Becoming Intimate with the Earth. A singer songwriter, she has produced five CDs of her original music. In an earlier life, she was called “a musical instrument linked to a soul” for her passionate portrayal of chanteuse Edith Piaf in a play she co-wrote. Today, she is the creative director of a reconciliation initiative, Knowing Our Place. She lives on Bowen Island. For more information about Pauline, please visit her website: www.paulinelebel.com. To engage in ongoing discussion and updates about Howe Sound/Atl’kitsem, please visit: www.whaleinthedoor.com.

Pauline Le Bel's profile page

“Le Bel writes with a wisdom and soulfulness that can only come from a deep acceptance and knowledge of what it means to live, to age, to grieve, and to face the final chapter of one’s life.”

—Lisa Pahl, LCSW, co-creator of The Death Deck

“Keep on raising hell until / Heaven is in sight, writes Pauline Le Bel in this meditation on aging and death. Fierce, wise, and featuring a healthy dose of gallows humour, Becoming the Harvest is testament to the formidable power that gathers around a life well lived.”

—Rob Taylor, author of The News and Weather

“These poems are like a wildflower bouquet: surprising, charming and very welcome. This brief, powerful collection embraces death’s inevitability rather than ‘tackling’ it. A gentle reminder that death is simply a really important part of life, and it is perfect for anyone who believes that acknowledging mortality makes life more meaningful.”

—Christa Ovenell, death educator

“Beautifully crafted with wit, intimacy and grace. A voice of wise ripeness. Be nourished.”

—Leah Cline, Palliative Care Physician

“Oh, this is such a beautiful collection. I feel all the love, all the gratitude, all the cheeky humour. Approaching one’s death shouldn’t be this fun. Pauline shows that it could be.”

—Chris Corrigan, Harvest Moon Consulting