Finalist, Saskatchewan Book Award: Poetry Award honouring Anne Szumigalski

Suicide Psalms is both hymn and visceral scream - of loss, despair, hope and ultimately redemption. These poems are drawn out with quick precision, as if they were indeed written in haste, or delirium, before tightening the noose or firing the pistol or jumping off the ledge.

Praise for Suicide Psalms:

"And so it is that those friends who have lived close to suicide become the prophets who might lead us through the gathering darkness of our despairing ecocidal age - into more honourable, tender, sustainable ways of living together on this groaning, delicate, crying earth. 'That something better rises out of the ashes.' This is Rowley at her heart stammering, howling, apocalyptic, playful, musical best." (Di Brandt)

"Mari-Lou Rowley takes a dark subject and frames it in a minimalist form, and she is largely successful in this endeavour. ... The words and imagery can cut like a razor ... this work hits an emotional chord in the fewest words possible." (Geist)

"A number of poets have been using the word psalm to describe their poems, but Rowley doesn't use the term loosely. In this small collection divided into three parts she uses the suicide of an individual as a starting point from which to mourn that individual, to look at suicide as an option and to consider the way in which the human race seems bent on the indiscriminate trampling of the natural world." (The National Post)

Mari-Lou Rowley has published six previous collections of poetry, most recently CosmoSonnets (JackPine 2007) and Viral Suite (Anvil Press 2004). Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada and the US—and on Canadian Association of Physicists website. Rowley has performed her poetry across the continent, from Harbourfront to Seattle, where she performed at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual arts extravaganza. She also participated in the Poetic Ecologies conference in Brussels in May 2008. Rowley has a Master’s of Liberal Studies degree from Simon Fraser University. A science writer and avid star gazer, her favourite constellation is Orion. Her favourite cosmological phenomena are binary pulsars. In 2006 she moved to Saskatoon from Vancouver to be closer to the sky.

Mari-Lou Rowley's profile page