SaskBook Reviews, Shelley A. Leedahl

“Rarely does a first book make me question: what is this magic? I need to know who and how. When done exceptionally well, poetry, especially, can stir a cell-and-bone dance like no other genre. It’s just happened. Calgary poet A.B. Dillon’s Matronalia slices into the depths of what it is to mother a daughter, and to be mothered by a woman whose ideologies differ greatly from her own. With extraordinary skill, Dillon spins the prosaic into the profound.”

Herizons, Kerry Ryan

“The speaker in this collection refuses to conform to modern expectations about motherhood. She doesn’t organize place dates or mom’s groups. Instead she urges her daughter to be resilient, rejoice in herself and engage with art. These poems are what she can’t say out loud to her child: ‘When you have this disease, you speak in / tongues. The best way I can speak to you is in words on a page.’

As a manifesto about a mother’s inability to love, it fails; Dillon’s beautiful poems are all heart.”