{"id":6508,"date":"2020-09-28T17:44:32","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T17:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=6508"},"modified":"2020-09-30T04:58:17","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T04:58:17","slug":"skookum-raven-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=6508","title":{"rendered":"SKOOKUM RAVEN Has Landed!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

She persists.<\/em> Due to a reversal of fortune six years ago I had to leave my island home and return to the city. I started a business which left little time for poetry; reading or composing. Despite that and with herculean effort I\u2019ve managed to produce a third volume of verse and today announce the launch of Skookum Raven<\/em>. I am able to take joy in witnessing manuscript transformed into book, forged in the crucible of coronavirus. I am still a page baby, a re-emerging page baby. Poet.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t discuss poetics-leave it to the rigour of critics-or defend the form but certainly the right to employ my voice, to claim a quality of life, as life invariably ebbs. There ain\u2019t nobody that can sing like me<\/em>. I know my purpose and it\u2019s my way of staring down the abyss.<\/p>\n

Many thanks to my publisher Ekstasis Editions, to friends and family for their love and encouragement. Here comes the show biz:<\/p>\n

There are some rough and wild birds around Howe Sound — West Coast avians like the sharp-shinned hawk, the northern harrier, and the whiskey-jack. Heather Haley, an accomplished mapper of human migration, pair-bonding and predation, takes these feathered frenemies as her starting point in this assured third collection, Skookum Raven. Like her foremothers and contemporaries Gwendolyn MacEwen, Susan Musgrave and Karen Solie, Haley writes sophisticated free lyrics of a witchy feminist kind — but adds some proletarian ferocity with her bus-station grandpas and sketches of iffy guys like Ed the Fence. These are astute, austere poems which sometimes take flight into optimistic beauty — this book is \u201cpockmarked with luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSkookum Rave<\/em>n is a text for the tricksters within. With spondaic pow-bams of language, these lyrics harness neologistic energies to evoke punchy lust, back alley bravado, and coastal croonings on sex, the wild, music and time.\u201d -Catherine Owen<\/p>\n

\u201cTart, taut and terse, Haley’s honed poems of lust and loss, wrath and remorse are imbued with hard-won insight and subversive wit. Her wry x-ray eye cuts to the quick in an array of deftly drawn portraits that will make you grin with recognition. Haley is a master of assonance, consonance and dissonance, intermingled with flashes of a distilled lyricism\u201d. – Fiona Tinwei Lam<\/p>\n

\u201cHeather Haley\u2019s Skookum Raven<\/em> honours the west coast with brilliant side-eye observations couched in words drawn from a wide palette, from Chinook trade language to Pussy Riot. She brings us on a stroll through the village, showing the underbelly of every house and garden, then deeper into domestic disharmonies and unease in relatedness, writing sharply from a woman\u2019s point of view. If any reader has become lulled with the beauties of west coast living, she will shake you into more fulsome awareness of the \u201chard blessings\u201d shared. \u201cNo lotus-eaters we\u2026\u201d-Joanne Arnott<\/p>\n

\u201cHaley has the gift of writing to suit her subject in all its raddled variety, from wired and jarring to lyrical and tragic.\u201d-Vancouver Sun<\/p>\n

For a preview check out the Skookum Raven book trailer.<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’d like a copy please visit Ekstasis Editions’ website.\u00a0<\/a>Also, contact Ekstasis for details or to arrange appearances, events or media opportunities. For further information: Richard Olafson or Carol Sokoloff\u00a0 \u00a0 Phone: (250) 385-3378\u00a0 \u00a0 email: ekstasis@islandnet.com<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She persists. Due to a reversal of fortune six years ago I had to leave my island home and return to the city. I started a business which left little time for poetry; reading or composing. Despite that and with herculean effort I\u2019ve managed to produce a third volume of verse and today announce the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[149,236,450],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6508"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6508"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6542,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6508\/revisions\/6542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}