Seeing Lessons

A vivid and sensitive poetry-portrait of a pioneering woman photographer and the British Columbia forests she captured on film. Mattie Gunterman (1872-1945) is a fascinating character, capable of walking from Seattle to Beaton, BC, running a full camp-kitchen, caring for her children and taking fascinating portraits of a British Columbia that has all but vanished, both the people and the trees. In thoughtful and elegantly written poems, Catherine Owen traces the life of this remarkable woman, contrasting both modern life and the modern environment with what Mattie would have encountered. Part biography, part environmental elegy, Seeing Lessons leaves readers seeing the world in a different light.

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).

Reviews

“Catherine Owen?s book of poetry, Seeing Lessons, demonstrates the power of both optical and linguistic imagery to capture the past and show us the present with new eyes.” – Alternatives Journal

“But although I was forced by my own shortcomings to read the poems at a snail’s pace, I can recommend this book to anyone with an interest in poetry of photography or Canadian history or women’s studies.” – Bad Tempered Zombie

“She has a beautiful way of putting language together and she has a sense of how to narrate a story.” – The Bull Calf