Book Type: Poetry
Untitled
These trees worked hard to get up here
one ring at a time. The prize is sky
and the freedom of birds.
Only three have reached the high blue dome
and now careen like honey bees
hover like hummingbirds one minute
soar like eagles the next.
These trees threaten to pull their own tops off
they stretch so hard, risking everything
to touch heaven.
Book Title: To This Cedar Fountain
Book Type: Poetry
Published: Vancouver: Polestar, 1995
ISBN:
In Print?: Out-of-print
Available From: abebooks.com
Description: Poems in response to Emily Carr’s paintings. With seven colour reproductions. Nominated for the Dorothy Livesay (BC) Poetry Prize.
“Without doubt Emily Carr – who never could abide sycophantic flattery –would have recognized a sympathetic spirit in the strength, unadorned directness and clarity of these poems which she inspired Kate Braid to write. In coupling quotations from Carr’s Journals with her own vibrant poetry, Braid has created a wonderful book.”
- Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr biographer and art critic
“This is a wonderful book, a true creative partnership with Carr.”
- Event Magazine
“To This Cedar Fountain is a rich effort to match Carr’s matchless paintings with poems that can discourse with her sinuous, sex-imbued, word-and-oils intuitions…. Braid goes tote-to-toe with Carr, so to speak, and remains standing.”
- George Elliott Clarke, The Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“These poems are sensual and physical….This is a book to settle into a comfortable chair with, to read it and then to read it again.”
- Arc
“[Braid’s] sensual response to Carr’s trees is startling, as is the luminous spirituality of both the poems and the excerpts from Carr’s Journals.”
- University of British Columbia, Alumni Chronicle
“Trees and sky have never lived like this – or they always have, but it’s taken these two women [Carr and Braid] to chronicle their joy.”
- The Georgia Straight
“Braid’s poems illuminate Carr’s words and pictures, and the two artists’ work moves together like the great ecstatic rhythms animating Carr’s late paintings.”
- Vancouver Courier
“[Braid’s] poems, coupled with quotations from Carr’s journals, are passionate, honest and full of the same, strange dark light that make Emily Carr’s painting so remarkable.”
- The Vancouver Sun
“To This Cedar Fountain is that rare combination of poetry, painting and prose coming together, making a bold and wonderful work of art.”
- Small Press
“Through her poetry, Braid connects the emotion and joy of life that Carr felt, through her painting and communion with trees, and feeds it to her readers.”
- Women in Libraries
