Canadian Poetry

Cathedral

Name: Cathedral
Author: Pamela Porter
ISBN: 9781553801061

by Pamela Porter

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Overview

Poetry. This collection of poems takes us on a journey—a very personal journey of Pamela Porter's own—to Africa and South America, those corners of the world the news reports never seem to cover: to Angola's thirty-year-long civil war, a landscape overrun with poverty, AIDS, and infant mortality; and to the struggles of ordinary people still haunted by the past horrors of Argentina's "dirty war." With language deceptively simple, filled with music, color and rich detail, Porter writes with grace and compassion, making a fierce beauty from all she sees, celebrating the resilience of the poor and oppressed, who nonetheless remain determined to live their lives with dignity and with joy.

Synopsis

This collection of poems takes us on a journey -- a very personal journey of Pamela Porter's own -- to Africa and South America, those corners of the world the news reports never seem to cover; to Angola's thirty-year-long civil war, a landscape overrun with poverty, AIDS, and infant mortality; to the struggles of ordinary people still haunted by the past horrors of Argentina's dirty war.Ó With language deceptively simple, filled with music, colour and rich detail, Porter writes with grace and compassion, making a fierce beauty from all she sees, all the while, celebrating the resilience of the poor and oppressed, who nonetheless remain determined to live their lives with dignity and with joy. It was Whitman who said, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.Ó In reading these poems, Porter's journey to become the wounded personÓ becomes our own -- as freshly as though we have travelled with her. Winner of the Governor General's Award for The Crazy Man, here is another Pamela Porter book to treasure, one that takes us into the heart of what it means to be a human being on this earth.

About the Author, Pamela Porter

Pamela Porter is the author of the multiple award-winning novel The Crazy Man and two previous volumes of poetry, Stones Call Out and The Intelligence of Animals. In 1988, she traveled to Nicaragua and Guatemala to document the experiences of ordinary people caught in the Contra war and the government sponsored terror against Guatemalan teachers and aid workers. Later with two children, she and her husband worked in Angola and Ghana. Pamela Porter is now a sessional instructor at the University of Victoria and lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, children, and a menagerie of rescued animals.