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Poetry Women Authors

Knife on Snow

by (author) Alice Major

Publisher
Turnstone Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2023
Category
Women Authors, Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780888017680
    Publish Date
    Apr 2023
    List Price
    $18
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780888017697
    Publish Date
    Apr 2023
    List Price
    $14.95

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Description

What portents must you divine when a knife falls from the sky into your snow covered yard? With Knife on Snow, Alice Major employs history, myth, and science to understand a world ablaze.

 

From the bitumen hills of Fort McMurray to the barren reaches of Iceland, Knife on Snow depicts an earth bathed in dragon’s breath, where like the Norse gods bound to their fate, we stand transfixed by the consequences of our actions, both driver /and passenger— part-cause / part-witness of earth’s unwinding.

 

As you would expect in Alice Major’s expert hands this unwinding yields to an evolution, a discovery, an acceptance of struggles' end and the possibility of a tomorrow unknown.

About the author

Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate from 2005–2007. Among her previous books are Memory's Daughter, for which she won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award in 2011; The Occupied World; and The Office Tower Tales, for which she won the Pat Lowther Award in 2009. In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award, presented by the City of Edmonton and the Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton.

Alice Major's profile page

Excerpt: Knife on Snow (by (author) Alice Major)

From Knife on Snow:
Wicked wedge, its shape embossed
on the untracked snow of my city yard.
Blade crusted with frost.
The sky is, as always, dark
at this early winter evening hour. There are
streetlights in the alley—glum sodium
burns like the light of dying stars.

What arc of history
brings this here, so deep inside my property
surrounded by a wall of caragana
fifteen feet high. Dropped impossibly
like a god’s random hammer
—a silent, unnerving thunderbolt.

Its anonymous menace.
The lack of explanation for its cold
and alien metal presence.
Irrational. Yet surely it called
for agency, intention, to fling the blade
this far. My hedges grow thick
and tangled.
There must be rage
beyond my narrow bailiwick,
my guarded fiefdom in the snow.

This took one hell of a throw.

Other titles by

Reimagining Fire

The Future Of Energy

by (author) Eveline Kolijn, Alice Major, Larry Kapustka, Kim Mannix, Monica Kidd, Emma Gammans, Rosemary Griebel, Maggie Hanna, Richard Harrison, Barb Howard, Mark Hopkins, Shannon Kernaghan, Alexis Kienlen, Michael Leeb, Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon, Natalie Meisner, Mar’ce Merrell, Peter Midgley, Uchechukwu Umezurike & Donna Williams
foreword by Chris Turner

Locations of Grief

An Emotional Geography

edited by Catherine Owen
contributions by Alice Major, Katherine Bitney, Alice Burdick, Marilyn Dumont, Ben Gallagher, Catherine Greenwood, Jane Eaton Hamilton, Richard Harrison, David Haskins, Steven Heighton, Theresa Kishkan, Christine Lowther, Canisia Lubrin, James Picard, Nikki Reimer, Waubgeshig Rice, Lisa Richter, Lynn Tait, Sharon Thesen, Onjana Yawnghwe & Daniel Zomparelli
by (author) Jenna Butler & Catherine Graham

Welcome to the Anthropocene

by (author) Alice Major

Standard candles

by (author) Alice Major

The Jade Spindle

by (author) Alice Major

The Office Tower Tales

by (author) Alice Major

Intersecting Sets

A Poet Looks at Science

by (author) Alice Major

Memory's Daughter

by (author) Alice Major

The Occupied World

by (author) Alice Major

Writing the Terrain

Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets

contributions by Ian Adam, Robert Stamp, Tammy Armstrong, Margaret Avison, Douglas Barbour, John O. Barton, Doug Beardsley, Bonnie Bishop, E.D. Blodgett, Robert Boates, George Bowering, Tim Bowling, Jan Boydol, Gordon Burles, Murdoch Burnett, Anne Campbell, Weyman Chan, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Cooley, Joan Crate, Michael Cullen, Cyril Dabydeen, Lorne Daniel, Alexa DeWiel, Jason Dewinetz, ryan fitzpatrick, Cecelia Frey, Gary Geddes, Gail Ghai, Deborah Godin, Jim Green, Leslie Greentree, Vivian Hansen, Tom Henihan, Michael Henry, Walter Hildebrandt, Gerald Hill, Robert Hilles, Nancy Holmes, Richard Hornsey, Tom Howe, Aislinn Hunter, Bruce Hunter, Laurence Hutchman, Sally Ito, Pauline Johnson, Aleksei Kazuk, Robert Kroetsch, Fiona Lam, William Latta, Tim Lilburn, Alice Major, Kim Maltman, Miriam Mandel, Sid Marty, David McFadden, Barry McKinnon, Erin Michie, Deborah Miller, Anna Mioduchowska, James M. Moir, Colin Morton, Erin Moure, Charles Noble, P.K. Page, Rajinderpal Pal, Ruth Roach Pierson, Joseph Pivato, Roberta Rees, D.C. Reid, Monty Reid, R. rickey, Ken Rivard, Stephen Scobie, Allan Serafino, Joan Shillington, Greg Simison, Carol Ann Sokoloff, Karen Solie, Stephan Stephansson, Peter Stevens, Ivan Sundal, Anne Swannell, Vanna Tessier, Colleen Thibadeau, John O. Thompson, James M. Thurgood, Eva Tihanyi, Yvonne Trainer, Aritha van Herk, Rosalee van Stelten, Miriam Waddington, James Wreford Watson, Wilfred Watson, Tom Wayman, Phyllis Webb, Jon Whyte, Christine Wiesenthal, Sheri-D Wilson, Christopher Wiseman, Stacie Wolfer, Rita Wong, Richard Woollatt & Jan Zwicky

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