Originally published in 2014, In the Slender Margin was enthusiastically received and applauded for its respectful sensitivity in dealing with a subject that is still, to many, an avoidable topic of conversation: death and dying. Using her 20+ years' experience working as a palliative care counsellor in a hospice as a springboard for exploration, Joseph probes our collective knowledge of that final life experience that we all must face.

Intimately personal and wise, this award-winning poet gives us a deep and profound musing, a "wise and lyrical meditation" on the slender margin, that mysterious slip of geography between life and death.

From the Preface:

"First published in 2014, In the Slender Margin was/still is, a meditation of sorts on death and dying. It did not prescribe then, nor does it now, ways to move through grief in order to find closure. I wrote the book as a way of understanding what I had seen in my years as a hospice counsellor. In the process of writing and thinking about death from many different angles, I found the brother I had lost many years ago and, fifty years after his death, was able finally to mourn and hold him close. COVID-19 has initiated many discussions about mortality. It is my hope that this book can add, in whatever way, to those conversations."

Praise for In the Slender Margin:

"In the Slender Margin is intended as an exploration rather than a balm or solace, though it will no doubt be those things for some people. Its resonance comes, rather, from its intelligent open-endedness, its unflinching, simultaneous embrace of death's reality and persistent mystery." (Globe and Mail)

"A literate, free-association meditation on the final fact of life." ( Kirkus Reviews )

"Intricate and beautiful . . . Provides an intimate language for grief and makes death a site of wonder as much as pain. . . . In her careful prose, her encounters with the dead, dying and mourning take on a kind of grace." ( National Post
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EVE JOSEPH’s first book of poetry, The Startled Heart (2004), was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. The Secret Signature of Things (2010) was also nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, along with the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Award. She was awarded the 2010 P.K. Page Founder’s Award for Poetry. Her non-fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, and her essay “Intimate Strangers” was nominated for a National Magazine Award and won both the Malahat Review’s Non-Fiction Award and the Western Magazine Awards “Gold” category for B.C. and Yukon Territories. Her work has been published in a number of Canadian and American journals and anthologies. Eve Joseph lives in Victoria, B.C.

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