LINDA K. THOMPSON
WRITER / POET
My debut collection launched July 1, 2021!
Read a review by Wendy Donawa in the Ormsby Review, February 15, 2022
From my publisher’s website:
Thompson’s debut book of poetry, is loaded with personalities from small towns and long ago days. Growing up in the isolated Pemberton Valley in BC her characters are full of imperfection and humour. Verna, who sneaks back from the dead, Gloria, who whacks down walls, Kirk, who buys a house on Visa, and old Pete, who never loved the moon. Thompson deftly combines the twang of a hurting song with something dark, lyrical and very witty. Peppered with farm life, cows, horses and old cars, the reader enters each poem and doesn’t want to leave. There’s Eddie who rolled his skidder in ’68. Dominion Day on the verandah. Juicy Fruit and Sen Sens. Dreaming about black bears in the carrot field. Ethyl Peach hammering out tunes on a mildewed piano. And then there is Jesus, come to town, driving a Chevy Chevelle or was it a Dodge Dart, mid-blue, hardtop with a 273, spotted later at the Stawamus Chief looking way up. Finally a Canadian poet that writes characters better than many novelists.
Black Bears in the Carrot Field
Mother Tongue Publishing
978-1-896949-84-0 | 90 pages
$19.95
ABOUT
Hello, friends. Thank you for visiting my website. I live and write in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. I started writing classes at North Island College back in 2001. I was very encouraged by poet/instructor, Derek Hanebury. I also attended the Victoria School of Writing for three summer sessions with instructors sherri-d wilson, Susan Musgrave and Susan Stenson.
Since then I studied for many years with Patrick Lane in his Glenairely and Honeymoon Bay Retreats on southern Vancouver Island and have been privileged to attend workshops with Ellen Bass, Marie Howe, Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar.
My writing is influenced by both the emerald landscape of Vancouver Island and that of my childhood home in the beautiful Pemberton Valley. The rich soil of that Valley seems to cling to me no matter the number of years I am away. Voices of family and ancestors make their way onto my pages. I am compelled to record, to save their whispered stories.
For me, as the great American poet, Robert Frost, said: “A poem begins as a lump in the throat...a homesickness.”
