“In the late 1990s I began the public art project ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands. While photographing what remained of the institution’s rooms and hallways I became immersed in the history of the Woodlands School. I couldn’t help but sense the pain and suffering of those who had lived there. Shannon McConnell with great depth and compassion tells the stories of the people who lived in these rooms. When I read her words I felt that I had heard these voices before.”

—Michael de Courcy, artist, ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands

“Here are the lost lives, thwarted dreams and desires of the neglected, abused and forgotten inmates of the infamous Woodlands School. Shannon McConnell’s poems are a tender reimagination of the girls and boys, men and women who were disappeared by a society that didn’t want to see or acknowledge their capacity for love, humour, kindness, insight and wonder. In these poems, their humanity is rendered in lucid, painstaking detail.”

—Elizabeth Philips, poet and novelist

“‘Did you think you could hold their silence / like kittens under water?’ No, according to Shannon McConnell. With the unwavering eyes of an activist, McConnell restores voice, vision, muscle and bone to the men, women, and children who were betrayed by Woodlands, an institution that failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. This is a vital collection, written with intelligence and delivered with grace.”

–Katherine Lawrence, award-winning poet and young adult author

“McConnell fights to ensure that the inhabitants of the Woodlands School, ‘every name / buried here,’ are not forgotten. She holds up the remnants of the troubling and erased history of this place before the reader and demands that they pay attention in this mighty debut.”

—Nicole Haldoupis, editor of Grain and untethered and author of Tiny Ruins