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Poetry General

Penny Dreadful

by (author) Shannon Stewart

Publisher
Vehicule Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2008
Category
General, Canadian
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781550652772
    Publish Date
    Jan 2008
    List Price
    $6.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550652451
    Publish Date
    Sep 2008
    List Price
    $16.00

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Description

Penny Dreadfuls were popular, cheaply produced 19th century magazines filled with brutal and sensationalist tales. In her uncompromising second collection of poetry, Vancouver poet Shannon Stewart revisits their grisly spirit through a series of meditations that examine the media's obsession for luridness, be it tabloids or "respectable" newspapers. At the centre of the book is the story of accused serial killer Robert Pickton. In poems of great psychological risk-taking, Stewart tracks the missing women of Vancouver's East Side and describes--using a voice by turns gritty, funny, shrewd, and broken-hearted--how the gruesome details of their reported murders seep into her role as a mother and wife. Fable-like, ribald, and packing a powerful anti-puritanical punch, Penny Dreadful furnishes us with unsentimental X-rays of the contemporary world and its sundry terrors.

About the author

Shannon Stewart is the author of Sea Crow (Orca, 2004), Alphabad: An Alphabet Book for Wicked Children! (Key Porter Books 2005) and Captain Jake (Orca, 2008). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Shannon lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and two children in a cottage by the sea where she sometimes spots young pirates digging for treasure.

 

Shannon Stewart's profile page

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