The Endless Garment
Marguerite Pigeon
October 26, 2021
120 pages | ISBN 978-1-989496-37-4
**Shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Award for Poetry**
**Finalist for the 2021 Foreword INDIES Award for Poetry**
With equal parts love of the art form and social critique, Marguerite Pigeon’s new epic poem ranges over time and space through several poetic collections that delve into the history and impact of fashion. Guided, and haunted, by a series of ghosts, from Coco Chanel to Gypsy Rose Lee to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pigeon's narrator moves through the floors of a grand existential department store, comprehending, reinventing and questioning her approach to, and understanding of, fashion
Advance Praise
"Divided into seasonal and functional sections like a glossy magazine’s contents page, Marguerite Pigeon’s 'pocket epic' miniaturizes the speaker’s epic obsession with fashion. She realizes she shouldn’t want to 'go shopping' – the waste, the child labour, the cruelty, the illusion – but in the end, she once again owns her endless fascination, pleasure, and ambivalence. The strong tactility of Pigeons’s language – which invokes both texture and fabrication – makes for a candid exploration of the transformative effect of clothing, beyond fashion and beyond the perennial critique of fashion.” – Sharon Thesen, author of The Good Bacteria and The Receiver
“Dantean in scope, The Endless Garment takes us to the paradise and underworld of fashion in a marvelous symphony of fabrics, cuts, and textures. The journey is exhilarating and unforgettable, and we emerge with much insight into the cloth and the weaver of our lives.” – Meredith Quartermain, author of Recipes from the Red Planet and Lullabies in the Real World
Reviews
Library 2022 (Lisa de Nikolits, the Minerva Reader, 07/08/2022)
"If like me, you’re a lover of fashion and beauty, then you don’t want to miss out on this collection. The poems took me down memory lane and I hope, as the days of Covid hopefully come to a close, that we’ll return to more gorgeous garments and poems thereof."
The Endless Garment: a pocket epic in five collections by Marguerite Pigeon (Wolsak & Wynn, 2021) (Catherine Owen, Marrow Reviews, 23/05/2022)
"Marguerite Pigeon’s The Endless Garment is a refreshingly strange foray into a realm too infrequently glimpsed within our genre."
1299 Cut from a Cloth of Desire (Heidi Greco, The Ormsby Review, 25/11/2021)
"Admiration. That’s the feeling I get when I think of authors who are able to envision a big picture for their manuscript, who can write to a unified subject or theme. Poet Marguerite Pigeon is one such writer. . . . More than historical narrative, these poems sing; their rhythms sometimes imitate an old-fashioned treadle-run sewing machine, its needle bobbing up and down through layers of hand-woven fabric."
Interviews
Women's Work and Fashion: The Living History of Women (Marguerite Pigeon, All Lit Up, 22/10/2021)
"Dress was slow, bound to a specific place and people. Fashion was fast. It travelled. And it sold itself as choice."
Marguerite Pigeon, poet and author, in her own words (Gilbert Le Gras, Gilbert Le Gras Communications blog, 24/09/2021)
"When I lived in Toronto in my 20s, I would visit fancy stores to touch the exquisite fabrics and see, in real life, the clothes that were in the pages of the magazines. It was almost too much to bear."
Articles
16 Reads for Women’s History Month (All Lit Up, 02/10/2023)
A wonderful mention of Marguerite Pigeon's The Endless Garment for Women's History Month!
15 poetry books shortlisted for 2022 ReLit Awards (CBC Books, 02/05/2022)
It's wonderful to see The Endless Garment on the ReLit shortlist!
2021 Foreword INDIES Finalists in Poetry (General) (Foreword INDIES, 14/03/2022)
The Endless Garment is a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Poetry.
Pick your favourite holiday reading room! (All Lit Up, 09/12/2021)
QUIZ: Pick your favourite holiday reading room and see if you get Marguerite's collection!
The Globe 100: The books we loved in 2021 (Margaret Cannon, et. al., the Globe and Mail, 29/11/2021)
Marguerite's collection makes the Globe and Mail top 100 books of the year!
30 Canadian books coming out in November we can't wait to read (CBC Books, 01/11/2021)
Marguerite's collection make this CBC list of books coming out in November we can't wait to read.
45 Canadian poetry collections to watch for in fall 2021 (CBC Books, 24/08/2021)
Marguerite's collection makes this CBC list!
Most Anticipated: Our Fall 2021 Poetry Preview (49th Shelf, 09/08/2021)
Marguerite's collection makes the 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated Fall Poetry Preview.
Excerpt
Read an excerpt from The Endless Garment.
About the Author
Marguerite Pigeon writes poetry and fiction. Her previous books are Inventory (Anvil Press), Some Extremely Boring Drives (NeWest) and Open Pit (NeWest). Untangling her arm’s-length preoccupation with clothes has been an odyssey. Spiritually northern Ontarian, she lives in Vancouver, where she works as a freelance editor and writer through her business, Carrier Communications.
