Description
Tonya Lailey’s Farm: Lot 23 explores the complex relationship we have with land, particularly as it relates to agriculture. Her poems depict the spectrum of human experience that plays out on the stage of the family farmlove, desperation, triumph, folly, caution, greedand the real impacts that technology, economics and shifting cultural values have on both the people and the land. Lailey reminds us that the fates of culture and agriculture are inseparable, that “the purpose / of a farm / of a poem / has always been / the living in it.”
About the author
Tonya Lailey spent her childhood on a farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She started a winery there in 2000 with her family and winemaker Derek Barnett. Certified as a sommelier, she worked in the wine trade until 2020. In 2022, she received an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She currently lives in Calgary with her two daughters and writes poetry, essays and children’s fiction. This is her first book of poetry.