Cusp/detritus

Photographs by: Karen Moe

Rooted in the back alleys, squats and psychiatric wards of contemporary Vancouver and Montreal, these unyielding poems enter the intersecting tensions and intensities in characters such as Mike, a panhandler on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive, Matthew, a runaway punk, and Dara, a single mother. ‘Cusp”s central sequence, however, concerns the tragic life and death of Frank Bonneville, a schizophrenic and drug-addicted artist who became Ms. Owen’s muse between their 2001 meeting and his 2003 suicide. Complemented by Karen Moe’s haunting photographs of Vancouver’s neglected spaces and rejected objects, ‘Cusp/detritus’ is a testimony to an obsession with the lost.

“It is intentionally unsettling, disturbing, sad, and you cannot deny it, a celebration of a life.” – Prairie Fire

AUTHOR

Catherine Owen

Catherine Owen is an Edmonton-based poet (formerly of Vancouver) whose work has been published in national and international journals such as ‘Queen’s Quarterly’ and ‘Poetry Salzburg’. Her first book ‘Somatic: The Life and Work of Egon Schiele’ (Exile Editions, 1998) was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award while her second, ‘The Wrecks of Eden’ (Wolsak and Wynn, 2002) was short listed for the BC Book Prize. Her most recent collections are ‘Cusp/detritus’ (Anvil Press, 2006) and’Shall: Ghazals’ (Wolsak and Wynn, 2006). Her work has also appeared in the anthologies ‘A Practice of Spirit'(St Thomas Poetry Series 2002) and a collection of tributes to Joe Rosenblatt (Guernica Editions 2005).

AUTHOR