Bird Calls The Island Responds
Publisher: Island Studies Press$14.95In 1854 British travel writer Isabella Lucy Bird visited Prince Edward Island for six weeks and published an account of her stay there that was both scathing and charming. “Paris may be the gayest city in the world,” she wrote, “and London the richest, but Charlottetown was the most gossiping.” “I never saw a community,” she continued,” in which people appear to hate each other so cordially.”
Contemporary Island poet Jane Ledwell was both fascinated and exasperated by Bird’s haughty, privileged judgement and decided to “write back”–160 years later. The result is Bird Calls: The Island Responds.
Bird Calls weaves the travel prose of Isabella Lucy Bird with Ledwell’s poems written in response, and delivers an intriguing conversation for the reader which contrasts PEI then and now, and showcases the talents of two accomplished writers, from very different generations.
Elaine Harrison: I am an Island that Dreams I am an Island that Dreams
Publisher: Acorn Press$24.95Elaine Harrison was born in Petite-Rivere in Nova Scotia, but moved to Prince Edward Island to teach in 1938. There, she and her companion spent their summers at “Windswept,” the 200 year-old farmhouse on the cliffs near Seacow Head, where they lived a simple life, and for over fifty years were involved in the intellectual life of the Island and beyond, playing host to numerous summer visitors and corresponding with some of Canada’s top writers. In 1968, retirement gave Elaine the freedom to turn to her interests: her poetry, the campaigning for favoured causes, but above all her painting. Inspired by the Group of Seven, she found her subject matter in the cliffs and waves at Windswept, the sunflowers in her garden, the trees of the local hardwoods, and latterly her own cats and kitchen. In the early days she frequently gave her paintings away to anyone who appreciated them, but from the 1970s she began to get the recognition and financial returns they merited. She died in 2003, but her work is still much-loved by Islanders.
Return of the Wild Goose
Publisher: Island Studies Press$14.95Return of the Wild Goose explores the life of writer and activist Katherine Hughes. Set against the intimate relief of a PEI landscape, these poems are inspired by what is known—and unknown—about her contradictory life and character as Catholic teacher, journalist, public servant, and Irish nationalist. This (auto) biographical dialogue between Jane Ledwell and Katherine Hughes offers the reader a fierce remembrance of a PEI radical.
Last Tomato
Publisher: Acorn Press$15.95Jane Ledwell grew up in Prince Edward Island. She won first prize for both prose and poetry in the Atlantic Writing Awards in 2001, and has been published in journals such as blueSHIFT and anthologies such as Landmarks and A Bountiful Harvest. She lives and writes in Charlottetown.