Finalist for the Eileen MacTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer
In Cameron’s evocative opening poem, a young woman, temporarily deprived of her eyesight, pushes herself deep into inner space, letting the darkness unfold around her until the “boundaries of skin” dissolve and personal identity is fractured “like a galaxy into constellations.” The poems that follow explore what can happen when you dare to “keep your eyes open in the dark.” They touch on violence, mortality and mourning. But they also open the space of darkness to reveal its potential for intimacy, its rich eroticism, and its promise of liberation in a world without visual boundaries. Combining the intensity of the lyric with the scope of the long poem, Holding the Dark invites us to rethink our conventional concepts of darkness and enter the sensuous night.
About the Author
Melanie Cameron is a poet and educator who was born in Kitchener-Waterloo and now makes her home in Winnipeg. Her first collection of poems, Holding the Dark, was shortlisted for the Eileen MacTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer. Cameron teaches writing at both the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba and has served as the poetry editor at Prairie Fire magazine.
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