The Scare in the Crow

by Tammy Armstrong

Overview

As Tammy Armstrong rode horseback on a one-month sojourn in Iceland, up rose the ley lines that crosshatched the landscape — ancient tracks rife with saga, myth, and human history. In this collection, her poems both respond to W.H. Auden's poetic travelogue, Letters from Iceland, and evoke her raw relationship to the native natural world of North America.

In language that folds upon itself, chance sightings of wild creatures become a study of humanity before the animal that waits. In re-negotiating a space that includes other species and other life forms, Armstrong unbalances her perceptions, making her own space unfamiliar and finding new ways of conceiving of a less human-centred environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780864926272
Publisher:	Goose Lane Editions
Publication date:	10/29/2010
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Tammy Armstrong is the youngest narrative poet ever to be shortlisted for the Governor-General's award. Raised in the border town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Armstrong has lived in Vancouver, Halifax, and Fredericton, and travelled extensively in Europe, Mexico and Central America. Armstrong's writing appears frequently in Canadian and international literary magazines. A version of Bogman's Music, her first poetry collection, won the Alfred Bailey poetry prize, and was later a finalist for the Governor General's Award for poetry. Armstrong has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and has worked as an ESL instructor and waitress. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Table of Contents

I CharloSki Trail 12

Wanted: One Bearskin Rug 14

From Fundy Bank 15

Panther 17

Living Clock 18

Strange Apiary 19

Soursop 21

Porcupine 23

II What Settles the Week 26

What to Do with Unwanted Keepsakes 27

Below Estey's Bridge 29

While We Sleep, It Snows 30

Diamond to Main 32

Highway Attraction 33

Nothing to See Here 35

Navigation 37

III Failure of the European Starling 40

Dunbar Falls 42

Jîkulsnrl°n: Ice Lagoon 44

Here: Soft-footed 46

Flight Stop After Michael Snow's Eaton Centre Installation 47

Dim Sky 48

Speak Softly, Low One 50

IV Dragline 58

Up-river a House Breaks from Its Foundation 60

For you 62

A Pair of Horses: Those Ones 63

Patron Saint Against Lost Keys 66

River Scout 69

And She is No Stranger Now 71

Near Halfway Swayed Both Directions 73

Where They Don't Belong 75

The Scare in the Crow 77

V Hyla Amphibia 80

Grimsey Island 82

Lamprey 84

Zombie 86

Girls with Sharp Scalpels 88

Beauty to the Alligator's Beast 90

Canoe Lessons 97

Whatever You've Come to Get 99

On Renaming Mountains 100

This Late Light Tipping 102

Where it Softened 104

Acknowledgements 107

Notes 109

Editorial Reviews

"Armstrong employs sound the way a surgeon employs a scalpel. And her eye for imagery is that of a jeweller as she polishes the facets of her poetic craft."

Prairie Fire Review of Books - John Herbert Cunningham

"Armstrong employs sound the way a surgeon employs a scalpel. And her eye for imagery is that of a jeweller as she polishes the facets of her poetic craft."

From the Publisher