Poems with an urgent desire to discover a way to be in right relation to other creatures and to the earth itself.

There are many journeys encompassed in the pages of this mature and well-crafted first collection; literal travels to different parts of the world, to Europe and Africa, are the outward manifestation of the inward quest, the asking of the old but still essential questions: What is real? What is true? What is honourable? What is right? Yet these questions are new in that the poet is deeply concerned with the need to find a new paradigm, a new way to relate to the earth at this time of ever-heightening environmental crisis. And this seeking for how to be in and of the earth is paralleled by a personal search for intimacy with her fellow humans.

Throughout the collection, McGiffin never forgets that we are also animals, that we are as vulnerable at twilight, in "the wolfish light," as any other creature struggling to complete its brief sojourn on earth.

During the five years that Emily McGiffin lived in northwest BC, she became proficient in the fine art of firewood splitting. She holds an MSc from the University of London and has worked and studied in Italy, Sierra Leone and the Philippines. Her poetry, essays, reviews and journalistic articles, widely published in magazines across Canada, have most recently appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine and Contemporary Verse 2. Between Dusk and Night, her first poetry collection, was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and the Canadian Authors’ Association Poetry Prize. She currently lives in Toronto where she is a PhD student at York University.

Emily McGiffin's profile page

"McGiffin has an eye for subtle images that are exact and right. Her verses recall Isabella Valancy Crawford's picturesque and rollicking narratives, but also the philosophical touches of Jan Zwicky, Mahatma Gandhi, and Antoine de Saint-Exupery." - George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Chronicle-Herald

"[A] strong sense of atmosphere throughout, created by the sustained tension between wild and tame." - Sarah Bernstein, Lemon Hound

"There is an acute elegiac listening moving through McGiffin's first book. These spare poems have a beautiful sadness." - Judges' Comments, CAA Award for Poetry (shortlist)