“Being an islander means that you aren’t like everyone else.” Bounded by water, you can live your life with certainty knowing where your edges are. Drawn from interviews with artists from Newfoundland and Tasmania, these poems capture what it means to be an islander. To know every rock and tickle, “the sea your road/the hole in the sky/your light to travel by.” In My island’s the house I sleep in at night, Brinklow weaves stories and images with her own poetic imaginings.

Laurie Brinklow founded Acorn Press in 1993 and was its longtime publisher. She sold it in 2010 to pursue her PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania. Her PhD research explores people’s attachment to islands by examining “islandness” in Tasmanian and Newfoundland artistic expression. Laurie moved out to northern British Columbia with her family when she was five. They spent the next decade traipsing all over BC, Ontario, and points in between, following her construction-worker dad. After graduating from high school in Prince George, she lived in Victoria, she ended up on Prince Edward Island quite by accident, but when she got off the ferry, she said, “This is home.” Laurie’s poems have been published in various journals in Canada and Tasmania and in the chapbook Scars in the Saturday Morning Chapbook series. They have also been broadcast on CBC Radio. 

Laurie Brinklow's profile page

• Winner, PEI Book of the Year Award & Atlantic Book Award