In her debut poetry collection, Shannon McConnell explores the fraught history of New Westminster's Woodlands School, a former "lunatic asylum" opened in 1878 which later became a custodial training school for children with disabilities before its closure in 1996. Partially set in the 1960s and 70s, The Burden of Gravity uses personas to imagine residents' lives, giving voice to those who were unable to speak for themselves, to shift focus from the institutional authority to the experience of residents. As poetry of witness, the collection uses a grounding tone to excavate the individual experiences through traditional narrative, ekphrastic and experimental erasure forms that elicit an array of emotions, from heartbreak to anger. Drawn from archival research, The Burden of Gravity, challenges readers to consider how we, in the aftermath of deinstitutionalization, choose to remember institutions like Woodlands School.

Shannon McConnell's profile page

• Winner, Ministry of Culture, Recreation, and Sport First Book Award, 2021 Saskatchewan Book Awards
• Runner-up, SK Arts Poetry Award Honouring Anne Szumigalski
• Runner-up, City of Saskatoon/Saskatoon Public Library Saskatoon Award

Shannon McConnell is a writer, educator and musician originally from Vancouver, BC. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in untethered, The Fieldstone Review, Louden Singletree, In Medias Res, Rat’s Ass Review, The Anti-Languorous Project, and more. She holds degrees in English Literature and Education from the University of the Fraser Valley and Simon Fraser University, respectively, and is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan’s MFA in Writing program. In 2018, she won second place for the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Poetry. She finished an MA in History at the University of Saskatchewan in 2020 and is now pursuing her PhD at Queens University in Kingston, ON.

"'Did you think you could hold their silence / like kittens under water?' No, according to Shannon McConnell. With the unwavering eyes of an activist, McConnell restores voice, vision, muscle and bone to the men, women, and children who were betrayed by Woodlands, an institution that failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. This is a vital collection, written with intelligence and delivered with grace."

--Katherine Lawrence, award-winning poet and young adult author

“McConnell fights to ensure that the inhabitants of the Woodlands School, ‘every name / buried here,’ are not forgotten. She holds up the remnants of the troubling and erased history of this place before the reader and demands that they pay attention in this mighty debut.”

—Nicole Haldoupis, editor of Grain and untethered and author of Tiny Ruins

“Here are the lost lives, thwarted dreams and desires of the neglected, abused and forgotten inmates of the infamous Woodlands School. Shannon McConnell’s poems are a tender reimagination of the girls and boys, men and women who were disappeared by a society that didn’t want to see or acknowledge their capacity for love, humour, kindness, insight and wonder. In these poems, their humanity is rendered in lucid, painstaking detail.”

—Elizabeth Philips, poet and novelist

“In the late 1990s I began the public art project ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands. While photographing what remained of the institution’s rooms and hallways I became immersed in the history of the Woodlands School. I couldn’t help but sense the pain and suffering of those who had lived there. Shannon McConnell with great depth and compassion tells the stories of the people who lived in these rooms. When I read her words I felt that I had heard these voices before.”

—Michael de Courcy, artist, ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands