Hand Luggage: A Memoir in Verse

by P.K. Page

Towards the end of a long and passionate life, P K Page shares in a most engaging form the highlights of a life lived to the full.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2006

About the author

Patricia Kathleen Page, CC, OBC, FRSC, commonly known as P. K. Page, was a Canadian poet. She was born in Swanage, Dorset, England and moved with her family to Canada in 1919. She spent the last years of her life in Victoria, British Columbia. P.K. Page was an author of many published books of poetry, fiction, travel diaries, essays and children's books. Her poems were translated into other languages. By special resolution of the United Nations, in 2001 her poem Planet Earth was read simultaneously in New York, the Antarctic and the South Pacific to celebrate the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations.

She was also known as a visual artist, having exhibited her work at a number of venues in and out of Canada. Her works are in permanent collections of National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario.

Reviews

[Lindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

P.K. Page was born in England in 1916 and then immigrated with her family to Red Deer, Alberta, in 1919. She has won a Governor General's Award for poetry and has travelled extensively with her husband, William Irwin, who was a diplomat. Her memoir has a delightful cadence and employs language and rhyme in playful ways.

"But in my classroom, Canadian voices --
hard r's and flat a's, a prairie language --
were teaching me tolerance, telling me something.
This vocal chasm divided my childhood.
Talking across it, a tightrope talker,
corrected at home, corrected in classrooms:
wawteh, wadder -- the wryness of words!"

[Peace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Page has lived an interesting life, but I don't really see the point of writing this memoir in verse.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetic memoir is structured very much like a prose memoir, with chapters following the poet's life and the story she wanted to tell. Not what I was expecting, but interesting.