Never Mind

by Katherine Lawrence

In Never Mind, Katherine Lawrence constructs a centuries-old immigrant tale that is fiercely feminist, surprisingly modern and darkly funny. The voice in these exquisite poems is a 19th century woman who straddles both old and new worlds as she navigates her own interior landscape. Observations are wry, intimate, and shot with musicality.

This muscular collection pays tribute to the long poem while extending the tradition with fragments from letters, diary entries, sketches, dialogue, and an ongoing communion with the natural world. “Who knocks?” asks Wife in Never Mind. “Maple leaves reddened with gossip — Come in.”

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2016

About the author

Never Mind is Katherine Lawrence’s third collection of poetry. The manuscript won the 2015 John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award and the 2014 City of Regina Writing Award. Her previous collections have been equally honoured. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Katherine chairs Access Copyright Foundation, and is a former president of the Sage Hill Writing Experience board of directors. She moved to Saskatchewan in 1982 and currently lives in Saskatoon with her husband.

Reviews

[Kathy Heare Watts]

I won a paperback copy of this book during a Goodreads giveaway. I am under no obligation to leave a review or rating and do so voluntarily. So that others may also enjoy this book, I am paying it forward by donating it to my local library.

[Nicole Overmoyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of poetry, that's probably important to say first, but I entered the giveaway for Katherine Lawrence's NEVER MIND because I like history, I loved the Little House on the Prairie series, and this book was described as a collection of poems from the perspective of a pioneer woman on the Canadian prairie. It was history, it was fiction, it was outside my comfort zone... so I wanted it.

And I was happy to get it.

Thrilled to read it.

Lawrence relied on non-fiction historical sources to inspire poems that range from the flowery words of an idealist woman leaving England for newer and better things, to the frustrating short lines about a husband and a land not being what she expected, to the dark words of a woman as her children suffer and cause her to suffer, and even to poetic conversations between two oxen as they ruminate on what they see their mistress do.

The collection is short, some of the poems almost painfully short. It tells the full-circle story of a woman on the Canadian prairie.

I love this book.

(I received a copy of NEVER MIND through the Goodreads First Reads giveaways in exchange for an honest and original review.)