Reckless Women

Reckless women inhabit the spaces of these poems: women who dare to travel without maps or even "a single sign," women who dare the seduction of cliff edge leaps into deadly waters, women who dare the midnight garden to ensure their crop. When Cecelia Frey considers the pain recklessness causes to others, she returns to the source that impels a reckless nature. There Frey finds women who challenge the empty spaces of the psychic frontier, women who let themselves be seduced by the vanilla man (or is it the other way around?), female magicians, performing aquabelles, women "who toss their clothes from the balcony / and have nothing to go home in." She also learns that recklessness is a dangerous game. That's when poetry itself comes to the rescue. When Frey reaches love's end and is herself silenced, the poems speak that silence. When "cold camphor travels her veins," the poems rant and defy, but they also instruct. They teach her to believe even when belief seems impossible. In the face of death, they speak of love. In despair of life, they assert that the trick is to achieve moments of joy. The female magician's task is to pull off such tricks: "lark / from fire / its white wings raised / singing."

Cecelia Frey is the author of three previous poetry books — And Still I Hear her Singing (Touchwood, 2000), Songs Like White Apples Tasted (Bayeux Arts, 1998) and the least you can do is sing (Longspoon, 1982) — as well as five books of fiction, which include The Prisoner of Cage Farm (U Of Calgary, 2003), The Nefertiti Look (Thistledown, 1997) and Breakaway (Macmillan, 1974). Her short stories and poetry have been published in dozens of literary journals and anthologies as well as being broadcast on CBC radio and performed on the Women's Television Network. Three times a recipient of the Writer's Guild of Alberta Short Fiction Award, she has also won awards for playwriting. She lives in Calgary with her family.