Description
Book SynopsisIn the arena, she shot cigarettes and coins from her trusting husband’s hand. Some women wished she would miss. —from “Little Sure Shot” Kat Cameron’s poetry illuminates the unsung perspectives of the women of the West, creating a compelling narrative that reflects the poet’s own struggles with sorrow. She conjures ghosts and weaves together insights on loss, memory, and the impacts of boom and bust.
Trade Review"[Cameron elucidates] aspects of living in Alberta: the boom-bust madnesses, the burns and floods, the Timmy Ho rednecks, the city scavengers and the sweet cricket fields.... Cameron’s poems simmer with a quiet ire amid their gentle songs." [Full review at https://crowgirl11.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/kat-camerons-ghosts-still-linger-u-of-a-press-and-kim-goldbergs-devolution-caitlin-press/] -- Catherine Owen * Marrow Reviews *
"The historical West was lawless and degenerate.... Kat Cameron is haunted by the experiences of those least among us, commoners of the Western prairies, especially women, and her searing work will not let us forget their grief." -- Matt Sutherland, Foreword Magazine, July / August 2020
"From prairie history to cultural considerations such as the Edmonton Oilers and Alberta bumper stickers, Cameron’s poems examine what occurs when life gets caught up against external forces, attempting to articulate the ghosts of what has been lost, and what may have been set aside, writing out a confluence of women from Alberta to Wyoming, through boom and bust, through hope and loss and sadness and grief. These are characters that fight to remain standing, something that, at times, is either all or more than they are capable of." [Full review at https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2020/08/kit-cameron-ghosts-still-linger.html] -- rob mclennan
Table of ContentsGHOSTS ARE ORDINARY 2 Cracked 3 Blue Scarf 4 B-Flat Minor 5 Lament 6 Haunted 12 For Gerda, on the threshold 14 Paper Chambers 15 Windows of Faith 16 Bastille Day 2016 17 The King in the Car Park 19 A Diary ALBERTA ADVANTAGE 22 Athabasca Glacier 1924 24 Big Burn 25 Copper Moon 26 Drought 27 Elms 28 Flood Erasures 2013 29 Garden 30 Hinton 2013 31 Interlude 32 Johnston Canyon 33 K-Country 34 Loons and Wolf Willows 36 Moose Photobomb 37 Old North Trail 39 Oilers Nation 40 Poetic Licence 41 Prairie Fields 42 Rollerblades 43 Saturday Night Prowl 44 Territory 45 Until Help Arrives 46 VW Ramblings 47 Whyte Avenue 2 a.m. 48 YEG/YYC LIGHTNING OVER WYOMING 50 Man of the West 51 Louisa’s Locket 52 Taken 53 White Shoes 54 Woman in White 55 Testimony 58 Soiled Doves 60 Little Sure Shot 62 Glass Targets in a Museum 63 Annie’s Gun 64 Lightning over Wyoming 69 Notes 73 Acknowledgements
