Patricia Young
Black and white photo of Patricia Young.
Biography
Patricia Young has published thirteen collections of poetry. Her poems have been widely anthologized and she has received numerous of awards for her writing. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award twice and has twice received the Dorothy Livesay Book Prize. She has also won the Pat Lowther Award, a CBC Literary Prize, Arc’s Poem of the Year Award, two National Magazine Awards, the Great Blue Heron Contest and the Confederation Poet’s Prize. A collection of short fiction, “Airstream,” won the Rooke-Metcalf Award, was shortlisted for the Butler Prize and named one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of the Year.
Poetics Statement
“The moment is a fish and the poet a hook. Like the time I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and my daughter was in the bathtub washing her hair. On my way out the door I turned and looked. Really looked. How many mothers in how many places? Seeing their daughters as never before. On a piece of paper I scribbled down the first line— All the ten-year old girls in the world are washing their hair. Trying to catch that fish before it slipped down the drain with bath water.”
Sample of Poet's Work
ILLEGAL
In a great exodus the young left the village for jobs and the excitement of the city. The old protested. Who’d plant the crops? Who’d herd the sheep? But the young only laughed and streamed down the road, weighed down with knapsacks and plastic bags. The old continued to die and soon every plot in the cemetery was taken. Not one more body could be squeezed into the churchyard. The desperate mayor called the people to the square and pronounced death illegal. Henceforth, he said, those who depart life will be punished with a hefty fine or six months in jail. Are you mad? a centenarian shouted from the back of the crowd. How dare you outlaw death when I have one foot in the grave. Everyone turned to look, and it was true, the woman’s left leg had already become one with the earth.
AFTERLIFE
I enter the timber-framed house built at the turn of the last century. Each small room opening into another small room. Beyond: the huge green forest. Once, I lay in bed listening to the trees breath chlorophyll. The creek water rushing full in February. But now vandals have smashed the windows. Mice infest the walls. I step around broken 78s, bits of brittle shellac scattered across the rotting floorboards. In a musty closet, floral dresses still smell of rose talc. People appear and disappear. On the back hill aunts and uncles are picnicking on ham and mustard sandwiches served on china plates stolen from Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. Under the stairs my three-year old daughter’s sitting in a tub of well water so concentrated with iron she could be bathing in a pool of liquid rust. And there is my young husband winding the Victrola on the front porch: Where were you, where was I, wherever we were, where were we . . .
