Between the Silences invites us to sit in the back row of Family and Youth Court, where important decisions are made everyday – decisions that can affect our children, our families, our friends, our neighbours, our communities. The fortunate among us will never be inside a courthouse. But Diane Buchanan takes us there with her poetry. Writing with the heart of a woman who is both nurse and mother, she uses poetry not to lull us but to wake us up. In a series of word snapshots and evocative portraits she creates a collage of images both thought-provoking and heartrending. Between the Silences reveals that strange and poignant world on the other side of the courthouse door.

Diane Buchanan's profile page

Diane Buchanan was a poet and essayist who lived in and around Edmonton, Alberta all her life. Her last thirty years were spent on a thoroughbred horse farm where she and her husband raised four daughters. She began to write after retiring from nursing and returning to University at the age of fifty. Her first book of poetry, Ask Her Anything was published in 2001. She passed away on November 22, 2013.