Could Be

Poems about the unexpected and often wry coincidences language lends to life.

In Could be, each poem is a moment of engaged and isolated attention, prodding language, relationships, the mundane aspects of daily life, friendships and art. It asks how we use words, how we shape them and are in turn shaped by them. In many ways, then, this book is about how we construct our world through language, and how language unexpectedly shifts the terms on us. It is wry, funny, moving and at times disturbing. It will quietly assert itself, as so often language itself does, and will challenge readers to reconsider how they engage with words and world.

Fly you, wildbird
half eaten by the smog.
All sheets to the wind. Oh oh
is it laundry day?
… We wake up
to the sounds of development.
Is that Mimico Creek
in the washing machine? If you roll over
you’re out of the dream and your anger
can really take shape. Sorry,
I meant passion.

— from “Perpetual Cleanup”

AUTHOR

Heather Cadsby

Heather Cadsby was born in Belleville, Ontario and moved to Toronto at a young age. She obtained a BA degree from McMaster University and taught elementary school for a number of years. In the 1980s she helped organize poetry readings at the Axle-Tree Coffee House in Toronto. A co-founder of the poetry press Wolsak and Wynn, she has recently served as a director of the Art Bar Poetry Series.

Reviews

” … One of those rare Canadian poets shoring a well-honed and generous sense of humour against the hard-edge of grief and loss … leaping beyond guffaws, weirdness for its own sake, and casting new light on the human condition in the way only the sharpest wits can.” –Nick Thran, Event

“Using snippets of conversation and colloquial turns of phrase, Cadsby writes deceptively light-hearted verse that serves as an honest inquiry into life and the inherent duality of the moment.”–Gilliam Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire