Winner, SFU Writer's Studio's First Book Competition

Galaxy is about a wounded family (Anger brimming until it overflows / into rage in the dark living room, / his undershirt soaked through / up the back to his collar), a prairie place (Ochre River girls / have a one-room school, / walk through fields of wheat, / play in silos, storing grain dust / in their lungs, / later to exhale it / like cloudy fire), love that is queer and conventional, about longing and loss (tempus fugit / my father emails, / now or never, / and I can't I don't / wish to speak to my mother. / I don't believe the mere flight of time / is reason enough) and a light shone into dark corners.

Galaxy is "emotional biography" - as Magaret Laurence called it - (Sometimes I have breathed flame, / I admit that my words - provoked - / have burned) where the facts are fabricated ("tell it slant," said Emily Dickinson), but the feelings are authentic.

Praise for Galaxy:

"A truly wonderful collection of poems. Wonderful and clear imagery as well as a 'real' and 'true' sense of place, love, longing, family, and the constant struggle and re-negotiation of self and experience. Galaxy possesses a simple but sensual approach to language and tone." (Gregory Scofield, author of kipocihkan: Poems New & Selected)

"Ms. Thompson gets the emotional centre right, dead on in fact. These poems avoid the screaming siren of the gender wars and get on about their business. Thompson's Galaxy is familiar territory emotionally, it is wonderfully authentic poetry." (Michael Dennis)

" ... a coming-of-age collection full of memorable strikes of pleasure and pain ... Galaxy is a book of extremes: the poems rocket between childhood / adulthood, rural / urban and desire / love. And although Thompson traffics in strong images and abrupt juxtapositions, she also allows room for doubt and ambivalence. Which is to say: Very nice! (More poems, please!)" (The Winnipeg Free Press)

Rachel Thompson grew up in Dauphin, Manitoba, located at the foot of Riding Mountain National Park, AKA the Galloping Goose of Margaret Laurence's books. She went to the University of Winnipeg, majoring in English and International Development Studies. After moving to Vancouver in the early 2000s, she took part in the award-winning Writer's Studio Program at Simon Fraser University. She completed Galaxy at the Banff Centre for the Arts Wired Writers program. Her poetry has appeared in journals in Canada and abroad.

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