The Bone Ladder: Selected and New Poems

by Rosemary Sullivan

Rosemary Sullivan is better known in Canada as a biographer, but her first love is poetry. In 1996 her first book of poetry won the Gerald Lampert Award for the best first book. In 1991 she published yet another book of poetry. But since then she has devoted herself to the biographies of Elizabeth Smart, Gwendolyn MacEwen and most recently that of Margaret Atwood. And for these works was nominated for one Governor General's Award, and won another. After eight years, however, she has returned to poetry. In this new collection, "The Bone Ladder," she introduces a new, experimental sequence, "Granada Notebook." It is written like a novel with an adulterous plot and characters, the sequence is set in the exotic city of the Alhambra. The poems explore what happens when love fractures and how it is recovered only after a long, exhaustive battle within the self. The title of this collection, The Bone Ladder, refers to the mysteries of ancestral inheritance, how the family anticipates us g

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Rosemary Sullivan is a Canadian poet, biographer, and anthologist. She is also a professor emerita at University of Toronto.