M. Travis Lane Reading (Fredericton)

M. Travis Lane reading at Westminster Books Feb 21

Thursday February 21 at 7 PM at Westminster Books, meet well-known local poet M. Travis Lane reading and discussing her latest book of poetry.

The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane is a collection of thirty-five of her best poems, selected with an introduction by Jeanette Lynes. An environmentalist, feminist, and peace activist, M. Travis Lane is known for witty and meticulously crafted poems that explore the elusive nature of "home" in both historical and present contexts and reflect on the identity of the woman poet and what it means to be a writer. Lane's poems exhibit impressive range and variety--long poems, short lyrics, serial poems, poems inspired by visual art--and are richly attentive to the landscapes, both urban and wild, of her New Brunswick home. They voice a sense of urgency with respect to ecological crises and war; her poetic attention fixes unwaveringly on the smallest pebble on the coast of Fundy but is equally attuned to global patterns of destructive domination.

In her introduction As Opportunity for Grace, This Life May Serve, editor Jeanette Lynes discusses how Lane's poetry integrates an ecopoetic vision with explorations of the artist's task of mapping her world.

Lane's afterword reinforces her sense of the poet's project as a form of mystical play, a search for patterns in the "unified disunities" of all things.

About the Author
M. Travis Lane is Honorary President of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick and a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has published eleven books of poetry (including the forthcoming The Safety Net) and received numerous awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English Language Literary Arts.