Paperback
978-1-77212-511-5Size: 5¼" x 9"
Pages: 104
Pages: 88
epub
978-1-77212-641-9Pages: 88
Fields of Light and Stone
Robert Kroetsch Series
By Angeline Schellenberg
You lie awake,
needlessly fingering
this patchwork guilt.
Remorse, a code
you live by; distress calls
for someone to blame.
—from “Threads”
Following the deaths of her Mennonite grandparents, Angeline Schellenberg began exploring their influence on her life. Her elegiac love letter to them articulates her grief against the backdrop of their involuntary emigration. She artfully captures the immigrant identity, vital to Canadian culture, in poems that draw on events both personal and global: war and famine, dementia and cancer, hidden sacrifice and secrets. Her poems captivate with themes of ancestry, memory, resilience, and forgiveness. Fields of Light and Stone is a reflection on how family history shapes and moves us.
Book details
Publication date: March 2020Series: Robert Kroetsch Series
Keywords: Ukraine, Russia, Europe, Manitoba, religion, faith, immigration, caregivers, spirituality, prairies, war, homeland, inheritance, confessional lyric, genealogy, family history
Subject(s): POETRY / Canadian, Creative Writing, Creative Writing / Poetry, POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss, Poetry / Canadian Literature, Ukraine, Russia, Europe, Manitoba, religion, faith, immigration, caregivers, spirituality, prairies, war, homeland, inheritance, confessional lyric, genealogy, family history, Poetry, Poetry
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Book details
Publication date: March 2020Series: Robert Kroetsch Series
Keywords: Ukraine, Russia, Europe, Manitoba, religion, faith, immigration, caregivers, spirituality, prairies, war, homeland, inheritance, confessional lyric, genealogy, family history
Subject(s): POETRY / Canadian, Creative Writing, Creative Writing / Poetry, POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss, Poetry / Canadian Literature, Ukraine, Russia, Europe, Manitoba, religion, faith, immigration, caregivers, spirituality, prairies, war, homeland, inheritance, confessional lyric, genealogy, family history, Poetry, Poetry
Publisher(s): The University of Alberta Press
Angeline Schellenberg. Angeline Schellenberg is a poet living in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg). Her first full-length collection, Tell Them It Was Mozart, received three Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for a ReLit Award for Poetry.
"Schellenberg’s collection is a love letter to these four people [grandparents] whose lives were so completely intertwined with hers." Kyla Neufeld, Prairie Books Now, Spring/Summer 2020 [Full article at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/poet-reflects-on-her-grandparents-lives-through-poetry-and-collected-letters-artifacts]
“Schellenberg’s best poems don’t offer easy answers, and do a good job of letting the question lie.”
"While most of the book’s poems are based on personal connections Schellenberg built with her grandparents over the years, she also explores topics of their ancestry, immigration, and courtship.... Some of the poems touch on the poignant theme of loss..." [Full review at https://nivervillecitizen.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/former-nivervillians-second-book-reflects-on-grandparents]
"Fields of Light and Stone excavates the relationships between Schellenberg’s Mennonite grandparents….The book moves among various styles and source materials as through sheaves of distinct documents…” [Full article at https://canlit.ca/article/sinews-and-sheaves/]
“I was immediately attracted to its contents because of the illustration on the jacket (Last Embrace by Miriam Rudolph)…. Between the covers are poems that sing of love and loss…. Schellenberg’s playful use of words is evident throughout…. This book will resonate with those writing memoirs or translating old letters and will perhaps inspire others to do so. Not that long ago, I sat with the boxes of correspondence my parents had left behind after they passed away. Many of the thoughts Schellenberg expresses in her creative, poetic style went through my mind at that time and they linger still. She has left a tribute to her grandparents that will stand the test of time.”
# 1 on Edmonton Poetry Bestsellers list, February 14, 2021
“Schellenberg’s Fields of Light and Stone enacts the terms of her title with its tender and exacting invocations of familial love…. [O]ne of the delicate strengths of Schellenberg’s poems of mourning is their fresh grief at old losses…. Fields of Light and Stone has a light touch that never confuses love for denial of death, and Angeline Schellenberg finds painful beauty in the imperfections of mourning.”
"In Fields of Light and Stone, Angeline Schellenberg turns to old love letters, datebooks, sermon notes, archived genealogies, and her own memory in a quest to understand her biological and spiritual heritage. Her search uncovers a treasure trove of courage and betrayal, love and loss. Through the alchemy of honed poetic skills and unflinching insight, her findings are transformed into evocative and personal poems that honour beloved grandparents and will echo long in the minds and memory of her readers."
"Angeline Schellenberg performs acts of remembrance that are all the more poetic for being scrupulously plainspoken, like their subjects. As I read these lyrical, earthbound gestures, Denise Levertov’s lines about her own ancestors, who 'prayed with the bench and the floor' kept coming back to me. Fields of Light and Stone is a series of love letters to the dead that makes its own eloquence out of 'what was at hand,' musical like a western meadowlark, ordinary like a well-worn burlap sack—an elegy to cherish."
Kobzar Book Award, Canada
Short-listed
2020
In some reminiscent hour
Love Letters, 1944–45 • 4–47
Time in Evergreen
Resurrection • 7
Tokens of Mercy • 9
This Is His Body • 11
Threads • 14
Beckoning Hills • 16
Preaching to the Choir • 17
Dementia, Warm October • 18
Grandpa’s Day Timers • 21
For When You Wondered Why I Wasn’t There • 23
The Minute I Heard You Died • 25
After Eights • 26
Funeral Tape • 28
Clouds above Canola
Gardening Advice from the Wife of a Pious Pastor • 33
The Autumn of Your Cancer • 35
Scavenger Hunt • 37
Between Seed and Harvest • 38
For Your Name’s Sake • 39
Closure • 42
The Night of the Fair • 44
Are you sewing, Mom? • 46
Deep Breathing • 48
What Little Things Come to Us • 49
There Is the Old Brick House • 50
Fields of Light and Stone
Fields • 54
Shivered into Being
In My First Five Year Diary • 57
Making Sheep • 58
Unwinding • 59
Oma’s Girl • 60
Bias Binding • 61
In Whispers He’s Still the Wanderer • 63
All Is Bright • 64
As We Left They Sang • 65
Edges • 67
Division • 69
What the Aspens Whispered
Under the Shadow of Your Name • 73
He Made Me Promise to Remember Arkadak • 74
Ancient Script • 76
Generations • 77
Plans to Prosper • 78
His Hands • 79
Sunset on Deep Bay • 80
Souvenir • 81
After the Funeral, I Pick up My Box • 82
Passages • 83
The First Trees • 84
Notes • 85
Acknowledgements • 89
Angeline Schellenberg. Angeline Schellenberg is a poet living in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg). Her first full-length collection, Tell Them It Was Mozart, received three Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for a ReLit Award for Poetry.
"Schellenberg’s collection is a love letter to these four people [grandparents] whose lives were so completely intertwined with hers." Kyla Neufeld, Prairie Books Now, Spring/Summer 2020 [Full article at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/poet-reflects-on-her-grandparents-lives-through-poetry-and-collected-letters-artifacts]
“Schellenberg’s best poems don’t offer easy answers, and do a good job of letting the question lie.”
"While most of the book’s poems are based on personal connections Schellenberg built with her grandparents over the years, she also explores topics of their ancestry, immigration, and courtship.... Some of the poems touch on the poignant theme of loss..." [Full review at https://nivervillecitizen.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/former-nivervillians-second-book-reflects-on-grandparents]
"Fields of Light and Stone excavates the relationships between Schellenberg’s Mennonite grandparents….The book moves among various styles and source materials as through sheaves of distinct documents…” [Full article at https://canlit.ca/article/sinews-and-sheaves/]
“I was immediately attracted to its contents because of the illustration on the jacket (Last Embrace by Miriam Rudolph)…. Between the covers are poems that sing of love and loss…. Schellenberg’s playful use of words is evident throughout…. This book will resonate with those writing memoirs or translating old letters and will perhaps inspire others to do so. Not that long ago, I sat with the boxes of correspondence my parents had left behind after they passed away. Many of the thoughts Schellenberg expresses in her creative, poetic style went through my mind at that time and they linger still. She has left a tribute to her grandparents that will stand the test of time.”
# 1 on Edmonton Poetry Bestsellers list, February 14, 2021
“Schellenberg’s Fields of Light and Stone enacts the terms of her title with its tender and exacting invocations of familial love…. [O]ne of the delicate strengths of Schellenberg’s poems of mourning is their fresh grief at old losses…. Fields of Light and Stone has a light touch that never confuses love for denial of death, and Angeline Schellenberg finds painful beauty in the imperfections of mourning.”
"In Fields of Light and Stone, Angeline Schellenberg turns to old love letters, datebooks, sermon notes, archived genealogies, and her own memory in a quest to understand her biological and spiritual heritage. Her search uncovers a treasure trove of courage and betrayal, love and loss. Through the alchemy of honed poetic skills and unflinching insight, her findings are transformed into evocative and personal poems that honour beloved grandparents and will echo long in the minds and memory of her readers."
"Angeline Schellenberg performs acts of remembrance that are all the more poetic for being scrupulously plainspoken, like their subjects. As I read these lyrical, earthbound gestures, Denise Levertov’s lines about her own ancestors, who 'prayed with the bench and the floor' kept coming back to me. Fields of Light and Stone is a series of love letters to the dead that makes its own eloquence out of 'what was at hand,' musical like a western meadowlark, ordinary like a well-worn burlap sack—an elegy to cherish."
Kobzar Book Award, Canada
Short-listed
2020
In some reminiscent hour
Love Letters, 1944–45 • 4–47
Time in Evergreen
Resurrection • 7
Tokens of Mercy • 9
This Is His Body • 11
Threads • 14
Beckoning Hills • 16
Preaching to the Choir • 17
Dementia, Warm October • 18
Grandpa’s Day Timers • 21
For When You Wondered Why I Wasn’t There • 23
The Minute I Heard You Died • 25
After Eights • 26
Funeral Tape • 28
Clouds above Canola
Gardening Advice from the Wife of a Pious Pastor • 33
The Autumn of Your Cancer • 35
Scavenger Hunt • 37
Between Seed and Harvest • 38
For Your Name’s Sake • 39
Closure • 42
The Night of the Fair • 44
Are you sewing, Mom? • 46
Deep Breathing • 48
What Little Things Come to Us • 49
There Is the Old Brick House • 50
Fields of Light and Stone
Fields • 54
Shivered into Being
In My First Five Year Diary • 57
Making Sheep • 58
Unwinding • 59
Oma’s Girl • 60
Bias Binding • 61
In Whispers He’s Still the Wanderer • 63
All Is Bright • 64
As We Left They Sang • 65
Edges • 67
Division • 69
What the Aspens Whispered
Under the Shadow of Your Name • 73
He Made Me Promise to Remember Arkadak • 74
Ancient Script • 76
Generations • 77
Plans to Prosper • 78
His Hands • 79
Sunset on Deep Bay • 80
Souvenir • 81
After the Funeral, I Pick up My Box • 82
Passages • 83
The First Trees • 84
Notes • 85
Acknowledgements • 89
