Pine Island

Sleep guardians, unstep yourselves. Turn towards the outside. Recall his speaking look, the only sound in a city of whisperers where hurt is cradled in the palm of a hand. Cuts traced along ink lines, words like milk and pleasure and pain turned inside out and shaken from these pages. Rest your head upon that bosom. You are marooned on a pale island, lapped by gentle voices, careful footsteps, confidences. Pine Island is an experimental memoir written in the form of a series of letters to an unknown recipient. The book chronicles a year in the life of the author as she navigates family illness, bereavement and motherhood while honouring and cultivating the poetic life she has created. Weaving family interactions and personal reflections with observations of the natural world and accounts of the weather, the book creates an intimate space in which the reader becomes a participant in an evolving present. "Lucy Sheerman's elegantly filigreed poems act as open letters in complete sentences and somehow dwell in a completely emotional, existential space between a kind of fairytale allegorical world and one that's personal and thoroughly modern. Whether 'Dearest' is lover, friend, child or some other kind of intimate other, these poems carve out a strong craving for saying the things one usually can't-except by way of poetry." -Lee Ann Brown