Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry Canadian

The Sink House

by (author) Julia Williams

Publisher
Coach House Books
Initial publish date
Sep 2004
Category
Canadian, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781552451465
    Publish Date
    Sep 2004
    List Price
    $14.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Home is where the heart is, or, in the case of The Sink House, home is what the heart is. Sequestered on a sleepy street in a dry Calgary suburb, our heroine, the House, finds herself embroiled in a stalled love affair with an elusive and alluring Oxfordshire riverbank. In a series of self-contained poems both prosy and lyrical, we follow this curious and engaging affair, which mysteriously coincides with a slow and gradual flood.

Everything succumbs to the persistent rise of water: the street becomes a creek bed, wallpaper comes away in the night, sandbags melt, kitchen utensils become silt. Here, the furniture floats, flowers become fish that feed in the garden on vegetables that explode with damp. Through it all, our lovers persist, salvaging soap boats and flushing toilets for amusement. Intelligent, enigmatic, sometimes humorous, and always enticing, The Sink House is a long, eccentric love poem that will immerse you in the flood of its own desire.

'If only the imagination were real. Story seems to think so. And so does Julia Williams. Here, image (hear the image) beautifully choreographs the story into a readable imagination that is a measure of syllabic and rhythmic particulars, a language, thankfully, balanced, open and with surprise. In other words, a poetry that makes seeming so.' – Fred Wah

About the author

Julia Williams is a poet and prose writer whose work has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, CV2, Queen St. Quarterly and THIS magazine. Most recently, her poetry was included in the 2005 Mercury Press anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She has lived in England and New Zealand, but is now nesting in Calgary, where she works for a non-profit and dabbles in freelancing.

Julia Williams' profile page

Related lists