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Susan McMaster
Book Launch: Ottawa Art & Poetry
Borealis Press is please to invite you to the launch of Lizard Love: Artists scan poems by Susan McMaster, which collects three decades of art inspired by Susan's poems -- with commentary from artists. Hear what they to say about poets! Get discounts! Eat cake!
Artists include Ellen Drennan, Claude Dupuis, Pat Durr, Gwen Frankton, Alrick Huebener, Roberta Huebener, Juliana McDonald, Morel McMaster, Betty Page, John Tappin, Marie Tappin, and Paula Zoubek.
Ottawa poet Susan McMaster has published some two-dozen books, magazines, and anthologies, including recordings with First Draft, SugarBeat, and Geode Music & Poetry. She is the founding editor of Canada’s first feminist magazine, Branching Out, and has organized such projects as “Dangerous Graces: Women’s Poetry on Stage” (Great Canadian Theater Company) and “Convergence: Poems for Peace,” which brought poetry and art from across Canada to all parliamentarians for the millennium. Award placements include the Ottawa Book Awards, the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Prize, Arc Magazine’s Best Poem of the Year and Archibald Lampman awards, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. McMaster is a former president of the League of Canadian Poets, and a member of PEN, TWUC, FSNA, and CWILA.
From Susan McMaster
Sign of Respect
Afraid she’s fallen or had a stroke
when she doesn’t answer my knock,
I have the nurse unlock her door,
ignoring with a daughter’s disdain
the clearly written post-it –
“Do Not Disturb”
in her school-teacher hand –
stuck above the knob,
and can only laugh
with surprise and a kind of
relief and delight
to see two bare bodies
half rise on the bed,
as I step in.
“Sorry! – ” I back out fast.
Who gave me the right
to breach a shut door?
What made me sure
age had smothered that flame?
