The House You Were Born In

By Tanya Standish McIntyre
Categories: Literature & Language Studies, Poetry, Social Sciences, Family Studies, Literary Criticism, Auto/biography & Memoir
Series: Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Paperback : 9780228014645, 120 pages, December 2022
Ebook (PDF) : 9780228015789, December 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780228015796, December 2022

A stunning debut by a promising new poetic voice, haunting and uplifting in equal measure.

Description

a keeper of things forgotten, a vase / for pictures made by words, a riverbed / for the stories you tell, an earthen silhouette / of a child

With vivid imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish McIntyre’s words breathe life. Her richly lyrical phrases capture both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural working-class community, anchored by the magical bond between a young girl and her grandfather.

Way’s Mills, Quebec, is the setting for these poems, although as with Mark Twain’s Mississippi, physical place becomes a place in the heart in this elegy for lost ancestral farms. Standish McIntyre gives voice to the unspoken, shining a light into the dark corners of our collective memory to reveal an indelible past that gleams with clarity, empathy, and humanity. Taking seed in the dilapidated barns and warm sunlit rooms of Standish McIntyre’s personal history, these poems weave a filigree of well-worn remembrances and time-honoured treaties of the self, half forgotten yet ever lingering.

Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, this collection holds a sweeping narrative power that will stay with you long after the last line.

Reviews

“Barns and sheds, old chesterfields, pond ice, damselflies, graveyards and ghosts – rarely
have these words been so evocative, so glorious. From Quebec’s Eastern
Townships comes an arresting new voice.” Shelley Pomerance, arts journalist

“Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, calling to mind Dillard in an arching
narrative.” David Gow, award-winning Canadian playwright

“With
gorgeous imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish
McIntyre captures both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural
working-class community.” Carolyn Rowell, TILT Writer’s Cooperative

“Tanya Standish McIntyre is ‘a keeper of things forgotten.’ A haunting debut
collection.” Louise Abbott, author of The Heart of the Farm

“Explorations of family and consciousness carve a sure path through the tangled thickets of the past in The House You Were Born In, allowing Quebec’s Eastern Townships to emerge not just as backdrop but as character. Each trenchant, graceful poem illuminates a time and a place, as though a light shone from behind memory.” Mark Abley, author of The Tongues of Earth