Chores

By (author): Maggie Burton

***2024 Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian First Book Winner***

This semi-autobiographical collection of poetry offers an historical snapshot of domestic life that views women’s labour, relationships, and sexuality through a feminist lens.

Chores is about families and the domestic work of settler women on the island of Newfoundland. A comedy and a tragedy in equal parts, Chores explores everyday life with all its pleasures and suffering.

The simple, indirect, and accessible language of Chores creates vivid, recurring images of food, household objects, body parts, and animals. The poems scrutinize the physical and social details of domestic labour and of the conditions in which women did, and continue to do, the work of sustaining life.

AUTHOR

Maggie Burton

Originally from Brigus, Ktaqmkuk, Maggie Burton currently lives in St. John’s with her blended family, including four young children, a plethora of small animals, and her partner, Michael. Trained as a classical violinist, Maggie is a multi-disciplinary performer with a background in arts administration and music education. Maggie started writing poetry after having kids at the age of twenty. Currently, she dedicates her time to community-oriented work and writing. Her poems explore family, folklore, feminism, and sexuality.


Reviews

“Chores are universal. Unless one has a housekeeper or maid under their employ, it’s a necessary day-to-day grind. We all have to-do lists to tackle on a regular basis, just as our ancestors did, and theirs were even longer than ours. But as Maggie Burton proves through Chores, a tenacious attitude is what makes the difference between a home well-maintained, and a home only reluctantly maintained. There is beauty and meaning to be found in chores if one simply wipes the sweat away from one’s forehead and peers closer. Past the dust and grime and potato peelings and breadcrumbs, there is history.”


– E.R Zarevich

“Maggie Burton’s Chores is charming and profound, traditional and inventive. Its combination of qualities seems effortless but is not only the innate fruit of a vision but the result of skillful poetic design. The book’s detailed, intimate awareness beautifully evokes Newfoundland and expands to our worldwide cultural moment. Burton applies a critique of how we live while embracing life with tenderness and humour. For all the fate, traditional limitation, labour, bitter recognition that chores contain, perhaps the deepest desire of Chores is to fulfill its glimpses of hope beyond mere acceptance: “the old harbour was chock solid with seals // and harpoons and I now believe / with all my heart the stirring is true…”


– Canadian First Book Prize Judges Albert F. Moritz, Jan Wagner, and Anne Waldman

Awards

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Excerpts & Samples ×

This semi-autobiographical collection of poetry offers an historical snapshot of domestic life that views women’s labour, relationships, and sexuality through a feminist lens.

Chores is about families and the domestic work of settler women on the island of Newfoundland. A comedy and a tragedy in equal parts, Chores explores everyday life with all its pleasures and suffering.

The simple, indirect, and accessible language of Chores creates vivid, recurring images of food, household objects, body parts, and animals. The poems scrutinize the physical and social details of domestic labour and of the conditions in which women did, and continue to do, the work of sustaining life.

Reader Reviews

Accessibility Detail

Accessibility summary
EPUB Accessibility Specification 1.0 AA
Table of contents navigation
Single logical reading order
Full alternative textual descriptions
Print-equivalent page numbering
Use of high contrast between text and background color
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Details

Dimensions:

80 Pages
7.75in * 5in * .20in
.05kg
0.05kg

Published:

April 01, 2023

City of Publication:

St. John’s

Country of Publication:

CA

ISBN:

9781550819632

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Women Authors

Language:

eng

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