Red With Living

In this compelling collection of poems and art, the colour of living is red with excitement, pain, sunsets, blood, and tropical flowers. Along the way, the poet paints herself into the works of Frida Kahlo, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Maud Lewis. Diane Driedger confronts the body in two different contexts: through her participation in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival and through her experience of undergoing breast cancer treatment and of being chronically ill. This is poetry that celebrates the body in all its varied forms.

AUTHOR

Diane Driedger

Diane Driedger has written extensively about the issues of women and people with disabilities over the past 30 years. Her book The Last Civil Rights Movement: Disabled Peoples’ International was published in 1989. She has co-edited two international anthologies by disabled women, and, most recently, co-edited with Michelle Owen, Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives (2008). Diane is an educator, administrator, activist, and researcher in the area of disabled women’s issues in Canada and internationally. She is also a visual artist and poet, and holds a Ph.D. in Education.

Reviews

“A naturalized Trinidadian through marriage, Diane, with an acute eye, successfully explores in poetry and art the contrasts between her Mennonite heritage in wintry Manitoba with the “letting go” carnival culture of Trinidad’s opulent tropical landscape. Lines such as “mashing down the place” and “Women would go mad without Carnival” are a foil to “standoffish Canadians” and “my past a black statue dress/ unrumpled/ not even a swish.” A bi-cultural tribute to both cultures.”
— Madeline Coopsammy, author of Prairie Journey

“Diane Driedger’s artful poems and allusive paintings tumble us through a carnival of the rebellious body. Red With Living invites a nervy reassessment of pain and pain’s intimate trespass upon the suffering, joyous body.”
— Méira Cook, author of Monologue Dogs