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list price: $16.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: Sep 2008
ISBN:9781894759281
publisher: Caitlin Press

A Well-Mannered Storm

The Glenn Gould Poems

by Kate Braid

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Description

"Selected for Poetry in Transit 2009", A Well-Mannered Storm is an exploration of loose correspondence between one of Canada's greatest musicians, Glenn Gould, and "K," an admiring fan. Braid weaves an intimate dynamic as K struggles with the loss of her hearing in one ear, finding her greatest comfort in Gould's music--particularly when he plays Bach. Gould's poems don't directly reply, but they do echo a response as he struggles with his own difficult life; his family, his health, his strong beliefs in how music should be presented and his personal habits considered "eccentric" by an ever-watchful press. K starts to accept her changing world, just as Gould begins a downward spiral into disintegration. In his final reflection, Gould acknowledges that in spite of his personal trials, his music now circles the world in the spacecraft Voyager as Earth's example to other possible life forms of what is most beautiful in this civilization.
A Well-Mannered Storm is a striking and masterful volume of poems that does justice to Gould's brilliance, offering insights into his personal life and art, even as it showcases Braid's own virtuosity.

About the Author

Kate Braid has published 14 books of non-fiction and poetry including three books about Emily Carr. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Contributor Notes

 

Kate Braid worked as a receptionist, secretary, construction labourer, apprentice and journey-carpenter before finally "settling down" as a teacher. She has taught construction and creative writing, the latter in workshops and also at SFU, UBC and for ten years at Vancouver Island University.

 

Braid is the author of the poetry books, A Well-Mannered Storm: The Glenn Gould Poems (2008), Covering Rough Ground (1991), To This Cedar Fountain (1995), Inward to the Bones: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr (1998), and Elemental (2018). In 2005 Braid co-edited, with Sandy Shreve, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry. It was re-released with a second edition in 2016 as In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry. Her 2012 memoir, Journeywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man’s World, tells the story of how she became a carpenter in the face of skepticism and discouragement. A revised edition of her award-winning poetry book Covering Rough Ground, Rough Ground Revisited, was published by Caitlin Press in 2015. In 2020, Braid released a collection of essays called Hammer & Nail, with Caitlin Press.

 

In 2012 Kate Braid was declared one of Vancouver’s Remarkable Women of the Arts. In 2015 she was awarded the Mayor of Vancouver’s Award for the Literary Arts for showing leadership and support for Vancouver’s cultural community, and in 2016 she received the Pandora’s Collective BC Writers Mentor Award. She lives in Victoria, BC.

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