The Flame Tree (Paperback)

Foster’s first collection of poetry shimmers with the colours of the South Pacific. The green flash at sunset, the “diamond sleeve of an ocean inlet,” and the “resilient fire of flame trees” all illuminate a landscape of white beaches and tangled forests of walking trees and tangentangen. This is a dangerous landscape of legend and memory, where the past lies hidden like the unexploded bombs beneath the surface of the island. But Foster revisits it with courage and grace, exploring her losses with the sure knowledge that the dead “are not fully gone/but winged in the way/summer is winged/with shadow.”

Clarise Foster spent ten years living in the South Pacific. Her family moved to Guam when she was twelve and she has since lived in Hawaii, Seattle, and Vancouver. She now lives in Winnipeg. Foster’s poetry collections include The Flame Tree and The Way Boys Sometimes Are.