Types of Canadian Women and of Women Who Are or Have Been Connected with Canada, Volume II | Gaspereau Press | 2006 | $19.95 CAN | $17.95 US | 1-55447-022-6 | Poetry | Trade paper | 128 pages
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wondrous and unclassifiable
Long-haired woman looking in a mirror, Cornwall. [ca. 1905] / Archives of Ontario / C 150-5-0-0-87 / Marsden Kemp fonds
The parlour of the parsonage of the Centennial Methodist Church; 63 David Street, Victoria; woman unidentified [ca. 1895] / British Columbia Archives / C-06607
Woman in a kitchen. [ca. 1905] / Archives of Ontario / C 311-1-0-20-1 / William Hampden Tenner fonds
Types of Canadian Women is [an] individual project, having less to do with history as such (revisioned or otherwise), and more to do with a kind of impenetrable and straight-faced weirdness, the distance and fascination of cryptic old images, the strangeness of imagining others.
Press is delightfully irreverent, her writing laced with irony and wit. ... Press handles tone beautifully, slipping dark and disturbing pieces between the lighter bits; their effect is all the more unsettling for the contrast. It’s an ancient format, instruction through delight, but it remains resilient.
R.S. Cassels / Library and Archives Canada / PA-123263
Press hints at the complexities of inner lives with great economy, writing adeptly of struggle, sadness and sometimes happiness, with a fine ear and a conviction that these women haunt us.