Authors

Publisher

Publication Year

First

New!

The poems in First, Arleen Paré’s seventh collection, search for a long-lost first friend. They conjure the subtle layers of meaning in that early friendship to riff on to a search for how we might possibly understand the primal First: the beginnings of the cosmos that contains our own particular lives, beginnings and longings.

Contributors

Arleen Paré

Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award for Poetry and won the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize in 2008. Leaving Now, a mixed-genre novel released in 2012, was highlighted on All Lit Up. Lake of Two Mountains, her third book, won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, was nominated for the Butler Book Prize and won the CBC Bookie Award. Paré’s poetry collection, He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car, was a 2015 Victoria Butler Book Prize finalist. The Girls with Stone Faces, her fifth book, won the American Golden Crown Award for poetry in 2018. Her sixth book, Earle Street, was released in Spring, 2020. She lives in Victoria with her partner of forty years.
Chapter Title Contents Contributors Pages Year Price

Preview

It – Beginning in Gravity – It begins in a corridor – In the beginning was noise and a flash – It begins in a driveway – Pat Hurdle became my best friend, my first … 14 $1.40

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A child gathers answers – A woman gathers questions – First family: semi-functional answers – You were in the parlour talking to them – No question should go unanswered … 10 $1.00

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Pat Hurdle – Games – Firsthand – Circle as ellipsis – True or false – In the dream I drive – Can a sister be causal – Mrs. Hurdle takes twelve hopeful … 33 $3.30

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The day of the Big Bang, or a sudden change of schools – Eclipse – First Catholic school – Waking up as I usually did/do 6 $0.60

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The American Wilderness Act – The first question is – How body can betray any girl – The bungalow mystery – Solitaire summer – Pat was not yet fourteen when her … 7 $0.70

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About Pat Hurdle’s mother there was never a warning – She died more than fifty-nine years ago – How numbers count – Prime numbers – my sister saw Pat Hurdle once in … 26 $2.60

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Fifty years later, how she found me – One day Pat Hurdle emailed – Before this, she had messaged – When I first see her after all these years – The whole of my childhood … 11 $1.10