Shameless

In Marlene Cookshaw's work time is slowed so that you can walk around in the moment, rub your knuckles on its nap, trace its lattice-work of airs and pressures, and touch the sensitive places left by accidents and old loves. Life seems to come forward to meet speech, even as speech is reaching to its edge. You breathe the salt tang of the particular.

"See where the mind goes? Between the lovely knots, a silk always strong enough to bear its weight. That throwing's what I love, what I would give my life to. Lacinato. Champion. Rougette. Red cabbages dense and beautiful as turbans, roses, words, like a row of toothy kisses, sweet, unmanageable, raw."

―from "Clear to me now"

Marlene Cookshaw was born and raised in southern Alberta and now lives on Pender Island, BC. She edits The Malahat Review, and teaches at the Victoria School of Writing. She has served on juries for various writing awards, among them the BC Book Prize for Poetry and the Prince Edward Island Literary Competition. Marlene is the author of three earlier books of poetry, two of which, The Whole Elephant (1989) and Double Somersaults (1999), were published by Brick Books.