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About
In 2010, Catherine Owen's 29-year-old spouse died of a drug addiction. A year later, she relocated to an apartment by the Fraser River in Vancouver, B.C. As she moved beyond the initial shock, the river became her focus: a natural, damaged space that both intensifies emotion and symbolizes healing. In a sequence of aubades, or dawn poems, Owen records the practice of walking by or watching the river every morning, a routine that helps her engage in the tough work of mourning. Riven (a word that echoes river and means rift) is an homage to both a man and an ecosystem threatened by the presence of toxins and neglect. Yet, it is also a song to the beauty of nature and memory, concluding in a tribute to Louise Cotnoir's long poem The Islands with a piece on imagined rivers. While Designated Mourner honors grief, Riven focuses on modes of survival and transformation through looking outward, and beyond.
A dynamic collection of emotional and ecological post-elegies, Catherine Owen's Riven draws on the environs of the Fraser River, the solace for the loss of a spouse, and the unfolding, healing time of grief.
Catherine Owen was raised in Vancouver and lives in Edmonton. She has published 15 collections of poetry and prose. Dear Ghost was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and won the Alcuin Prize. Locations of Grief, her memoir anthology, is also forthcoming.
Nature Writing 101
Our minds can turn anything romantic.
Is the problem.
The sewagy mud of the Fraser a quaint muslin & the spumes pulsing out of chimneys at the Lafarge cement plant look, at night, like two of Isadora Duncan's scarves, pale, insouciant veils, harmless. The trees are all gone but then aren't our hearts more similar to wastelands.
We can make it kin, this pollution, children one is sad about yet still fond of, their delinquency linked to our own, irreparable with familiarity, a lineage of stench & forgiveness. Our minds can assimilate all horrors.
Is the problem.
The animals will disappear and those small, strange invertebrates; the bees will vanish & in the well-oiled waters, fish will surge their deaths over the sand bags.
But then we keep saying, "Let's construct another narrative."
The nightmares must simply be called reality.
And after this you see, it is possible to carry on.
Short Description
A dynamic collection of emotional and ecological post-elegies, Catherine Owen's Riven draws on the environs of the Fraser River, the solace for the loss of a spouse, and the unfolding, healing time of grief.
Sales and Market Bullets
• Catherine Owen is the author of ten poetry collections, and her poetry has been reviewed in The Globe and Mail, The Bull Calf Review, The Fiddlehead, and Canadian Literature.
• Catherine Owen won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (2010) and was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award (1999), B.C. Book Prize (2002), George Ryga Award (2002), ReLit Award (2006, 2018), and the Pat Lowther Award (2018).
Audience
• Fans of Sharon Thesen, Daphne Marlatt, and Lynn Crosbie
• Outreach to Canadian major dailies
• Reviews in national and regional literary publications, in Canada and U.S.
• Regional media focus in Alberta and B.C.
• Author participation in reading series events across Canada
• Social media promotion focusing on book cover art
• Excerpt campaign for National Poetry month (April)
• Geotargeted social media a
A dynamic collection of emotional and ecological post-elegies, Catherine Owen's Riven draws on the environs of the Fraser River, the solace for the loss of a spouse, and the unfolding, healing time of grief.
Catherine Owen was raised in Vancouver and lives in Edmonton. She has published 15 collections of poetry and prose. Dear Ghost was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and won the Alcuin Prize. Locations of Grief, her memoir anthology, is also forthcoming.
Nature Writing 101
Our minds can turn anything romantic.
Is the problem.
The sewagy mud of the Fraser a quaint muslin & the spumes pulsing out of chimneys at the Lafarge cement plant look, at night, like two of Isadora Duncan's scarves, pale, insouciant veils, harmless. The trees are all gone but then aren't our hearts more similar to wastelands.
We can make it kin, this pollution, children one is sad about yet still fond of, their delinquency linked to our own, irreparable with familiarity, a lineage of stench & forgiveness. Our minds can assimilate all horrors.
Is the problem.
The animals will disappear and those small, strange invertebrates; the bees will vanish & in the well-oiled waters, fish will surge their deaths over the sand bags.
But then we keep saying, "Let's construct another narrative."
The nightmares must simply be called reality.
And after this you see, it is possible to carry on.
Short Description
A dynamic collection of emotional and ecological post-elegies, Catherine Owen's Riven draws on the environs of the Fraser River, the solace for the loss of a spouse, and the unfolding, healing time of grief.
Sales and Market Bullets
• Catherine Owen is the author of ten poetry collections, and her poetry has been reviewed in The Globe and Mail, The Bull Calf Review, The Fiddlehead, and Canadian Literature.
• Catherine Owen won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (2010) and was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award (1999), B.C. Book Prize (2002), George Ryga Award (2002), ReLit Award (2006, 2018), and the Pat Lowther Award (2018).
Audience
• Fans of Sharon Thesen, Daphne Marlatt, and Lynn Crosbie
• Outreach to Canadian major dailies
• Reviews in national and regional literary publications, in Canada and U.S.
• Regional media focus in Alberta and B.C.
• Author participation in reading series events across Canada
• Social media promotion focusing on book cover art
• Excerpt campaign for National Poetry month (April)
• Geotargeted social media a