Dream House

A long poem in six sections, Dream House takes its cue from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space in its investigation of female embodiment, calling up such feral, liminal spaces as the pregnant body, the aging mind, snail shells, broom closets, low-ceilinged pubs and abandoned pizza boxes. Part Tardis, part townhouse, part Howl’s Moving Castle, this wry, surreal and many-peopled narrative interrogates what metaphor might hold of history, both personal and social, after a mother’s passing. Its migrant speaker trawls through hedgerows and recipe books to unearth stained birdsong and undead civil wars, tracing a matrilineal path across four generations while traversing the haunted margins between existence and belonging.

AUTHOR

Cathy Stonehouse

Cathy Stonehouse is the author of a poetry collection, The Words I Know (Press Gang Publishers, 1994). Her writing (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) has also appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and anthologies including The Globe and Mail, The Literary Review of Canada, Descant, Grain, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle (Random House 2006), White Ink: Poems on Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2006) and Best Canadian Stories 09. Between 2001 and 2004 she edited the award-winning literary journal Event and in 2008 co-edited the well-received creative nonfiction anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood (McGill-Queens University Press, 2008). Born and raised in the UK, she holds a BA in English from Wadham College, Oxford and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. A tutor, editor and creative writing instructor she lives in East Vancouver with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

“ltpgtCathy Stonehouses ltemgtDream Houseltemgt like any magical dwelling is not what it at first appears to be Walk inside Explore its rooms It is larger and more expansive than you might think Also stranger more peculiar idiosyncratic It is a metaverse of possibilities the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined As Stonehouse herself puts it The house is a cocoon an open coffin It is full of weather and changes every time you dare to look Open the door Close your eyes The operative word is not ltemgthouseltemgt but ltemgtdreamltemgt Look around You are already thereltpgt”
– Paul Vermeersch author of ltemgtShared Universe New and Selected Poems 19952020ltemgt

“ltpgtIn ltemgtDream Houseltemgt Cathy Stonehouse trips the latch to a secret door exposing a network of hidden passages shiny with private meaning Amidst the very real furnishingstea towel ceramic hen nursery rhyme commemorative plate a mechanical contraption for slicing eggsthese shifting interiors bewilder and estrange until everything has been refurbished This book is an enchantment conjured by an imaginative and deeply original poet who knows intuitively that what matters when transcribing are the elisionsltpgt”
– Sheryda Warrener author of Test Piece

“From the British nightmare to the shores of British Columbia theres something deeply unwholesome going on in the details of this ltigtDream Houseltigt Stonehouse nails what its like to bring ghosts who will not rest from one hallucinatory place to the next Sit down whispers the Pacific You are not from here Stand up whispers the Atlantic You are not from here This is a deeply affecting collection you will not want to missand will certainly not forget”
– Elizabeth Bachinsky author of The Hottest Summer in Recorded History