Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Dorothy Livesay Poery Prize
Finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award“You remember — what is it you remember? / the feel of home, that moment of coming into your body. . . ”
So begins Daphne Marlatt’s haunting and multi-layered long poem, which reads with all the urgency and depth of a novel. Set in present-day and 1950s Vancouver,
The Given begins with the news of a mother’s death, then opens up to become an intricate tapestry of lives, as Marlatt deftly interweaves the past with the present, replicating the arc of memory itself, while questing for — and questioning — the meaning of home and identity. Circling around the narrator’s mother — theatrical, troubled, imprisoned in the small existence of a 1950s housewife, and a persistent presence in the lives of others —
The Given is a ceremony performed for her, and for all “those who have left, who g
