Cathedral

Cathedral

by Pamela Porter

$15.95

  • Autumn 2010
  • print ISBN: 978-1-55380-106-1
  • ebook ISBN: 978-1-55380-118-4
  • 6″ x 9″ Trade Paperback, 100 pages
  • Poetry



This collection of poems takes us on a journey — a very personal journey of Pamela Porter’s own — to Africa and South America, those corners of the world the news reports never seem to cover: to Angola’s thirty-year-long civil war, a landscape overrun with poverty, AIDS, and infant mortality; and to the struggles of ordinary people still haunted by the past horrors of Argentina’s “dirty war.”

With language deceptively simple, filled with music, colour and rich detail, Porter writes with grace and compassion, making a fierce beauty from all she sees, celebrating the resilience of the poor and oppressed, who nonetheless remain determined to live their lives with dignity and with joy.

Winner of the Governor General’s Award for The Crazy Man, Pamela Porter has given us another book to treasure, one that takes us into the heart of what it means to be a human being on this earth.

Click here to read an excerpt from Cathedral.

Reviews and Awards:

  1. Finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award 2011

“Porter’s poems are pervaded with a sense of grace, of mercy, beauty and benediction.”
—M. Travis Lane

“The first thing to admire in Cathedral is the poetry itself. Porter’s lines are direct, clear, narrative in intent, yet embedded with dazzling imagery that brings scenes fully alive.”
Canadian Bookseller

“The photograph on the cover of Cathedral is a fitting image for Pamela Porter’s soulful poems of praise to the vivid and exquisite details of day-to-day. In the first poem in this beautifully crafted collection, “Photograph of Earth from Space,” a poet’s powerful eye sees a nine-year-old boy carrying an empty coffee can and a mango to a tree where he will sit with a missionary who shows him magazines. … How wondrous is the pure simplicity of this poet’s words to tell a story rich, yet with so few words.”
Story Circle Book Reviews

Also by Pamela Porter: