Out to Dry in Cape Breton
Poems in a state of thrumming levitation
Like the laundry that greets readers at the start of Anita Lahey’s astonishing debut—hanging on clotheslines and bodied out in breezes—the poems in Out the Dry in Cape Breton exist in a state of thrumming levitation. Lahey’s scampish play with idioms, her accelerated sense of traditional forms, and her omnivorous eye for fresh imagery lead to a poetry streaming with surprises. The collection concludes with a long poem, an unsentimental vision of a Maritime world brimming with honesty, humour and paradox.
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Excerpts from the book
Out to Dry in Cape Breton
The title poem is an ode to my Cape Breton nanny. It appeared in the League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause in 2019.
Woman at Clothes Line
Inspired by a work of the same name by one of Canada’s greatest artists, Alex Colville. It also appears in the anthology, Washing Lines, published by the UK’s Lautus Press.
In Which Your Uncle Recalls the Last Time He Traversed the Treacherous Tiddle on the Way to Scaterie
Is part of the long sequence ‘Cape Breton Relative’ and appears in the anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets, published by Canada’s Biblioasis.