Signs of the Former Tenant

by Bronwen Wallace

This new book of poems by Bronwyn Wallace fulfils all the promises of her first. Her poetic interests have become more diverse, but her style remains as supple and pure and strong as ever. The book begins with a number of poems about childhood — the day she left her sandbox to pursue the strawberry ice cream in the sky, the long summer nights when she played Red Light, Green Light, the anxious, whispered conferences about lipstick and french kissing. Later, the husband, the children, the lover. Later still, the poems about the chemistry of dying, the days and hours that unwind themselves, the words that no longer matter.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

109 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Wallace was born in Kingston, Ontario. She attended Queen's University, Kingston (B.A. 1967, M.A. 1969). In 1970, she moved to Windsor, Ontario, where she founded a women's bookstore and became active in working class and women's activist groups. In 1977, she returned to Kingston, where she worked at a women's shelter and taught at St. Lawrence College and Queen's. She wrote a weekly column for the Kingston Whig-Standard. In 1988, she was writer-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario.

Her collections testify to her social activism involving women's rights, civil rights, and social policy. A primary focus of her work was violence against women and children.

Reviews

[Abigail]

... "but mostly we hate knowing / that for us too it is / moments like this / our thoughts stiff fingers / tear at again and again / when we stop in the middle of an ordinary day and / like the woman in this poem / begin to feel / our own deaths / rising slow within us" ("The Woman in This Poem", 82)