Paperback
978-1-77212-509-2Size: 5¼" x 9"
Pages: 88
Pages: 88
epub
978-1-77212-643-3Pages: 88
Ghosts Still Linger
Robert Kroetsch Series
By Kat Cameron
In the arena, she shot cigarettes and coins
from her trusting husband’s hand. Some women
wished she would miss.
—from “Little Sure Shot”
Kat Cameron’s poetry illuminates the unsung perspectives of the women of the West, creating a compelling narrative that reflects the poet’s own struggles with sorrow. She conjures ghosts and weaves together insights on loss, memory, and the impacts of boom and bust.
Book details
Publication date: February 2020Series: Robert Kroetsch Series
Keywords: prairie, blue-collar, history, artifacts, women’s voices, witty, lyrical, grief, memory, loss, landscape, rural, environmental impacts, social media, plains
Subject(s): POETRY / Canadian, Creative Writing, Poetry, POETRY / Women Authors, Poetry / Canadian Literature, prairie, blue-collar, history, artifacts, women’s voices, witty, lyrical, grief, memory, loss, landscape, rural, environmental impacts, social media, plains, Poetry, Poetry
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Book details
Publication date: February 2020Series: Robert Kroetsch Series
Keywords: prairie, blue-collar, history, artifacts, women’s voices, witty, lyrical, grief, memory, loss, landscape, rural, environmental impacts, social media, plains
Subject(s): POETRY / Canadian, Creative Writing, Poetry, POETRY / Women Authors, Poetry / Canadian Literature, prairie, blue-collar, history, artifacts, women’s voices, witty, lyrical, grief, memory, loss, landscape, rural, environmental impacts, social media, plains, Poetry, Poetry
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Kat Cameron. Kat Cameron is the author of Strange Labyrinth and The Eater of Dreams. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies across Canada. She lives in Edmonton.
"[Cameron elucidates] aspects of living in Alberta: the boom-bust madnesses, the burns and floods, the Timmy Ho rednecks, the city scavengers and the sweet cricket fields.... Cameron’s poems simmer with a quiet ire amid their gentle songs." [Full review at https://crowgirl11.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/kat-camerons-ghosts-still-linger-u-of-a-press-and-kim-goldbergs-devolution-caitlin-press/]
"The historical West was lawless and degenerate.... Kat Cameron is haunted by the experiences of those least among us, commoners of the Western prairies, especially women, and her searing work will not let us forget their grief."
"From prairie history to cultural considerations such as the Edmonton Oilers and Alberta bumper stickers, Cameron’s poems examine what occurs when life gets caught up against external forces, attempting to articulate the ghosts of what has been lost, and what may have been set aside, writing out a confluence of women from Alberta to Wyoming, through boom and bust, through hope and loss and sadness and grief. These are characters that fight to remain standing, something that, at times, is either all or more than they are capable of." [Full review at https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2020/08/kit-cameron-ghosts-still-linger.html]
"In Ghosts Still Linger, Kat Cameron blurs the boundaries between the past and the present. The blurring is lyrical, rich with 'luminous echoes' that make visible, like radar, the contours of grief and history. Her language—exquisite and elegiac—is another source of light: it reanimates the lives of Western icons like Annie Oakley, and it makes visible the endangered beauty of the Canadian prairies. This is a marvellous and memorable book."
Stephan G. Stephanson Award for Poetry, Writers Guild of Alberta, Canada
Short-listed
2021
High Plains Book Awards, United States
Winner
2021
2 Cracked
3 Blue Scarf
4 B-Flat Minor
5 Lament
6 Haunted
12 For Gerda, on the threshold
14 Paper Chambers
15 Windows of Faith
16 Bastille Day 2016
17 The King in the Car Park
19 A Diary
ALBERTA ADVANTAGE
22 Athabasca Glacier 1924
24 Big Burn
25 Copper Moon
26 Drought
27 Elms
28 Flood Erasures 2013
29 Garden
30 Hinton 2013
31 Interlude
32 Johnston Canyon
33 K-Country
34 Loons and Wolf Willows
36 Moose Photobomb
37 Old North Trail
39 Oilers Nation
40 Poetic Licence
41 Prairie Fields
42 Rollerblades
43 Saturday Night Prowl
44 Territory
45 Until Help Arrives
46 VW Ramblings
47 Whyte Avenue 2 a.m.
48 YEG/YYC
LIGHTNING OVER WYOMING
50 Man of the West
51 Louisa’s Locket
52 Taken
53 White Shoes
54 Woman in White
55 Testimony
58 Soiled Doves
60 Little Sure Shot
62 Glass Targets in a Museum
63 Annie’s Gun
64 Lightning over Wyoming
69 Notes
73 Acknowledgements
Kat Cameron. Kat Cameron is the author of Strange Labyrinth and The Eater of Dreams. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies across Canada. She lives in Edmonton.
"[Cameron elucidates] aspects of living in Alberta: the boom-bust madnesses, the burns and floods, the Timmy Ho rednecks, the city scavengers and the sweet cricket fields.... Cameron’s poems simmer with a quiet ire amid their gentle songs." [Full review at https://crowgirl11.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/kat-camerons-ghosts-still-linger-u-of-a-press-and-kim-goldbergs-devolution-caitlin-press/]
"The historical West was lawless and degenerate.... Kat Cameron is haunted by the experiences of those least among us, commoners of the Western prairies, especially women, and her searing work will not let us forget their grief."
"From prairie history to cultural considerations such as the Edmonton Oilers and Alberta bumper stickers, Cameron’s poems examine what occurs when life gets caught up against external forces, attempting to articulate the ghosts of what has been lost, and what may have been set aside, writing out a confluence of women from Alberta to Wyoming, through boom and bust, through hope and loss and sadness and grief. These are characters that fight to remain standing, something that, at times, is either all or more than they are capable of." [Full review at https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2020/08/kit-cameron-ghosts-still-linger.html]
"In Ghosts Still Linger, Kat Cameron blurs the boundaries between the past and the present. The blurring is lyrical, rich with 'luminous echoes' that make visible, like radar, the contours of grief and history. Her language—exquisite and elegiac—is another source of light: it reanimates the lives of Western icons like Annie Oakley, and it makes visible the endangered beauty of the Canadian prairies. This is a marvellous and memorable book."
Stephan G. Stephanson Award for Poetry, Writers Guild of Alberta, Canada
Short-listed
2021
High Plains Book Awards, United States
Winner
2021
2 Cracked
3 Blue Scarf
4 B-Flat Minor
5 Lament
6 Haunted
12 For Gerda, on the threshold
14 Paper Chambers
15 Windows of Faith
16 Bastille Day 2016
17 The King in the Car Park
19 A Diary
ALBERTA ADVANTAGE
22 Athabasca Glacier 1924
24 Big Burn
25 Copper Moon
26 Drought
27 Elms
28 Flood Erasures 2013
29 Garden
30 Hinton 2013
31 Interlude
32 Johnston Canyon
33 K-Country
34 Loons and Wolf Willows
36 Moose Photobomb
37 Old North Trail
39 Oilers Nation
40 Poetic Licence
41 Prairie Fields
42 Rollerblades
43 Saturday Night Prowl
44 Territory
45 Until Help Arrives
46 VW Ramblings
47 Whyte Avenue 2 a.m.
48 YEG/YYC
LIGHTNING OVER WYOMING
50 Man of the West
51 Louisa’s Locket
52 Taken
53 White Shoes
54 Woman in White
55 Testimony
58 Soiled Doves
60 Little Sure Shot
62 Glass Targets in a Museum
63 Annie’s Gun
64 Lightning over Wyoming
69 Notes
73 Acknowledgements
