All of Us Hidden

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By (author): Joanna Streetly

Six years ago, Joanna’s Streetly’s two stepsons and their boat disappeared into the ocean on an eerily calm night, barely 200 feet from Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. All of Us Hidden begins with poems that inhabit Tla-o-qui-aht traditional territory, the remote summer whaling islet where Streetly lived for several years with her former partner and stepsons. In the aftermath of the boys’ disappearance, she returns to the island to document how both she and the island might have changed. Streetly’s poetry ripples out beyond location and loss, into a broader investigation of time’s capricious shaping and re-shaping of children, parents, Earth and the self.

AUTHOR

Joanna Streetly

Joanna Streetly grew up in Trinidad and moved to Vancouver to study Outdoor Recreation and Wilderness Leadership. In 1990 she moved to Tofino, where she has lived ever since. While transitioning to writing and editing, she worked as a naturalist guide and sea kayak instructor. Most recently, her writing can be found in Best Canadian Essays 2017, and in numerous anthologies, magazines and literary journals. She is the author of Paddling Through Time (Raincoast Books) and Silent Inlet (Oolichan). Her published work includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She lives afloat in the Tofino harbour with her partner, Marcel, and daughter, Toby.

Reviews

Joanna StreetlysAll of Us Hiddenis a collection about belonging and being adrift at the same time Here a poet seeks answers to the unanswerable whether it is the remembered rough loving hands of a nowlost mother combing her hair as time mysteriously loops back on itself so the poet is fifty amp still a child a river amp still a stream or the disappearance of her stepsons lost at sea gone but everpresent this ocean in methis dark sea of questions Streetly writes with a rare lyrical grace of loss love and profound intimacy with the wild coastal place she calls home

Rachel Rose author ofThe Octopus Has Three Heartslonglisted for the Giller Prize and founder of Desperate Writer on Substack

With grace and compassion Joanna Streetly writes of place of loss of connection of thegenerations of songs floating from ourmouths How do you navigate a life so that at lastthere are bones in a placebones you belong to Streetly writes that I havelearnedbreathing and here we too can find breath in this beautiful and movingcollection

Gary Barwin author ofThe Most Charming CreaturesECW Press Fall 2022

All of Us Hiddendazzles with a vast poetic intelligence that delves into troubled personal cultural and ecological histories and reckons with the challenges of the Anthropocene with guts and grace

Sarah Giragosian author ofMother Octopus The Death SpiralandQueer Fish