Verge begins with a small fox waiting at the river's edge. She symbolizes a woman at a turning point in her life. She is on the verge of some understanding, some thing she is meant to know. The fox lopes through the manuscript of poems at first looking back on the “cold yesterday” of childhood, then traveling with her as she moves through various changes and losses in her life and the lessons she learns along the way. The river holds the past and, in the end, the small fox and the woman find their way across, and come to a place of acceptance and peace.

Lynda Monahan is also the author of four other collections of poetry, A Slow Dance in the Flames (Coteau Books, 1998), What My Body Knows (Coteau Books, 2003), Verge (Guernica Editions, 2015), and a cowritten collection, A Beautiful Stone: poems and ululations (Radiant Press 2019). She facilitates a number of creative writing workshops and has been writer-in-residence at a St. Peter’s College facilitated retreat, Balfour Collegiate in Regina, and the Prince Albert Public Library, and writer-on-the-wards at Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert. She is editor of several books, including Second Chances: stories of brain injury survivors, Skating in the Exit Light, a poetry anthology, and With Just One Reach of Hands, an anthology of the writing of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Writing For Your Life group, which she also facilitates. She has served on the council for the League of Canadian Poets, the Sage Hill Writing Experience, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. She recently completed a year as lead artist for an Artists in Communities project through the Sask Arts Board, mentoring local artists to develop long-term community arts programming.

Lynda Monahan's profile page

"The people in Monahan's poems are flame-licked and flame-vibrant, touched by fiery words and a passion for language." - Canadian Book Review Annual