a keeper of things forgotten, a vase / for pictures made by words, a riverbed / for the stories you tell, an earthen silhouette / of a child

With vivid imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish McIntyre’s words breathe life. Her richly lyrical phrases capture both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural working-class community, anchored by the magical bond between a young girl and her grandfather.

Way’s Mills, Quebec, is the setting for these poems, although as with Mark Twain’s Mississippi, physical place becomes a place in the heart in this elegy for lost ancestral farms. Standish McIntyre gives voice to the unspoken, shining a light into the dark corners of our collective memory to reveal an indelible past that gleams with clarity, empathy, and humanity. Taking seed in the dilapidated barns and warm sunlit rooms of Standish McIntyre’s personal history, these poems weave a filigree of well-worn remembrances and time-honoured treaties of the self, half forgotten yet ever lingering.

Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, this collection holds a sweeping narrative power that will stay with you long after the last line.

Tanya Standish McIntyre is a poet and visual artist living in Stanstead, Quebec.

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• Short-listed, Quebec Writers’ Federation 2023 Concordia University First Book Prize

“With gorgeous imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish McIntyre captures both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural working-class community.” Carolyn Rowell, TILT Writer’s Cooperative

“Barns and sheds, old chesterfields, pond ice, damselflies, graveyards and ghosts – rarely have these words been so evocative, so glorious. From Quebec’s Eastern Townships comes an arresting new voice.” Shelley Pomerance, arts journalist

“Tanya Standish McIntyre is ‘a keeper of things forgotten.’ A haunting debut collection.” Louise Abbott, author of The Heart of the Farm

“Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, calling to mind Dillard in an arching narrative.” David Gow, award-winning Canadian playwright

“Explorations of family and consciousness carve a sure path through the tangled thickets of the past in The House You Were Born In, allowing Quebec’s Eastern Townships to emerge not just as backdrop but as character. Each trenchant, graceful poem illuminates a time and a place, as though a light shone from behind memory.” Mark Abley, author of The Tongues of Earth