Margaret AtwoodMargaret Atwood (1939-), a perceptive and frank Canadian feminist with a sense of the absurd that will often make you laugh, is a poet and a novelist who has received wide acclaim in the U.S. and Europe as well as in Canada in both fields. She cryptically described the difference between writing the poem and the novel by saying, "With a lyric poem, you look, and meditate, and put the rock back. With fiction you poke things with a stick to see what will happen." Here is a good example of one of her lyric poems:
The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half‑acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
Further Reading: For a quick selection of Atwood's novels and poetry, click here.
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Content developed by local resident and poet Leland Jamieson
