• A Hat to Stop a Train

A Hat to Stop a Train

by Sheila Stewart

January 1, 2023 | ISBN 978-0-919897-89-2 | 88 Pages | OUT OF PRINT

**Out of Print**

"Tight and tighter, the mother binding her daughter to her, the daughter binding the mother's aching legs. Sheila Stewart 'puts down words to get closer' to a mother whose ashes are away in Ireland, but she achieves much more than a remembrance – this is a collection of tight, spare poems laced with Celtic wit, wry and askance, and astonishing imagery for the complexities of family. Stewart has a confident command of poetic form, and these poems are honed sharp enough to prickle your eyes, startle your heart." – Maureen Hynes

"Stewart's living 'Mum's Museum' offers a gentle interrogation of family stories, probing between the sayable for what couldn't be said, for threads of dis/connection, glimpses of remembered feasts, 'dates dripping honey, slices of heaven, slivers of earth, promises.' A shy love song: a tender poetic debut." – Di Brandt

"Sheila Stewart traces and retraces the complex geography of grief until its contours come clear in these angry, loving poems of loss and reclamation." – Rhea Tregebov

    • Review (Jeffery Donaldson, University of Toronto Quarterly, 12/1/2004)
      "Stewart's language is slightly more intense than the merely conversational, and while the language is not particularly eidetic in its impression, you appreciate its competent and earnest evocation."

  • Sheila Stewart has had her poetry widely published in literary journals like The Malahat Review, Grain, Descant, and The New Quarterly, as well as in her own collections, A Hat to Stop a Train (Wolsak & Wynn, 2003) and The Shape of a Throat (Signature Editions, 2012). Sheila's currently a lecturer and writing instructor at the University of Toronto. A position that gives Sheila a lot of experience with new voices.