Passing Stranger

by Pamela Galloway

Passing Stranger is a memoir in verse of one woman's life. Poems weave through a marriage, a desire for motherhood, considerations of fertility and infertility, an eventual divorce and a woman finding herself in late middle age, ready to experience life to the full. Its themes will speak to all women who have experienced the joys and the tribulations of motherhood in all its complexities. The interweaving of its story of divorce after many years of marriage reflects a new reality for many women of middle and past middle-age. Nothing in life, as we know, is certain. We make plans, head into directions that go awry, our destinations shift and we find ourselves in the company of people who, but for being family, might be strangers. It is these "Passing Strangers" met essentially by happenstance, in the close relationships a woman forms throughout her life who are at the heart of these poems. First, the passion and intimacy in a marriage believed to be "till death us do part" soon to be followed by pregnancy and motherhood. But in the space between these two major life events great loss is recounted. As she walks the path into and along her life's journey this woman experiences love and joy, disappointment and grief. There are glances back and forward through a marriage and beyond. The desire for children is strong and appears to be denied in poems about pregnancy, loss and infertility. Until a birth brings a change of focus into motherhood. Ultimately, children grown, the marriage ends, and the woman realizes her strength.

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2014

About the author

Pamela Galloway has written poems on the west coast of Canada and, more frequently now, from Manchester, UK where she has relocated after retiring from a lifelong career as a speech and language therapist.

Her first published poems were in literary magazines and many poems were published from 1993 to 1998 when Pam joined the Creative Writing department at UBC to work on her MFA, her main focus being poetry with a second track in creative non-fiction.

Pam writes about the people and places she encounters in daily life, often touching on universal stories or experiences the reader relates to, bringing new perspectives into the work.

Reviews

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is the story of how a chap in his mid 50s gets told about a book by a mate whose sister wrote it, and thus the chap did spend good money getting hold of such. And entered a world of loss, gain, loss, yet with occasional hope and joy.
The poems are sometimes hard to read: the expression of pain and emptying after multiple miscarriages coupled with a partner who uncouples himself from the journey is challenging. There are graphic details of medical procedures ("ways of knowing") alongside metaphorical cuttings ("the end of the yucca" can be read in oh so many ways), but these are balanced by a delightful story of picking blackberries with her son ("the colours of fruit") and the successful birth of her daughter ("by any oher name"; there is the unspoken jealously of "I'm expecting my sixth" alongside "the grieving parents group", where the author is by herself amongst three couples.
I can't say I enjoyed this collection - there's too much pain here - and there is a feeling of opening a curtain to someone else's private story laid out, something both fascinating and unsettling; the sorts of things folk only talk about with close friends. Perhaps that's the attraction of this poetry: we the reader are invited into intimate spaces, and asked questions about what we do to find healing and wholeness when we are dealt the slings and arrows by outrageous fortune.