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Enlarge Cover
list price: $17.95
edition:Paperback
category: Poetry
published: May 2012
ISBN:9781894759786
publisher:
Caitlin Press
Description
Emily Carr recorded the experience of the West Coast soul in her living landscapes and her portraits of BC's towering firs. Kate Braid, in To This Cedar Fountain, engages Carr in conversation as only a kindred spirit could: a West Coaster, an artist, a woman with an affinity for timber. In these poems Carr's sensual paintings envelop Braid; Emily romances the trees while Kate bears witness.
To This Cedar Fountain is a dialogue between two BC legends, each a distinct voice for her own generation but both indisputably coastal souls. The first edition of this book was nominated for a Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
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.
Editorial Review
Kate Braid has been powerfully attracted to Emily Carr—as a woman of great courage and perseverance, as a passionate painter and a memorable writer. And without doubt Emily Carr—who never could abide sycophantic flattery—would have recognized a sympathetic spirit in the strength, unadorned directness and clarity of these poems which she inspired Kate to write. In coupling quotations from Carr’s Journals with her own vibrant poetry, Braid has created a wonderful book.
—Doris Shadbolt, author of The Art of Emily Carr
