Ash Steps

M. Travis Lane’s fourteenth poetry title is a meditation on loss and reorientation, continuity and memory. Widowhood and mortality are at the centre of this quiet collection, but fear and self-pity are not to be found here: only a clear-eyed coming-to-terms. Lane’s metaphors are unforced, natural yet always surprising: a beggar sitting at the midpoint of a footbridge “like the small bubble balancing/ midway in a plumber’s level,” trees in a night plaza that “hold/ like dark peaches the late street lamps.” Her acute powers of observation are entwined with historical and cultural awareness, attunement to the natural world, and a music that holds it all together.

AUTHOR

M. Travis Lane

One of Canada’s most distinguished writers, M. Travis Lane lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She received her B.A. (Junior PBK) from Vassar College, and her M.A. and PhD. from Cornell University. She and her husband Lauriat Lane came to New Brunswick in 1960. Travis taught briefly at Cornell and at the University of New Brunswick and is a Honorary Research Associate with the English department at U.N.B. She is a member of the Voice of Women for Peace and a Raging Granny, a member of the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick and a Lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets.

She has published nineteen books of poetry and two of prose. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in Literary Arts, and the Lieutenant Governor?s Award for High Achievement in Literary Arts. She was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2015.