What Your Hands Have Done looks at how life spent in a close-knit fishing family in rural Prince Edward Island marks a person. The book is rooted in PEI but moves from there to Toronto where the malaise of life proves to be unbound to the sameness of small-town days spent hauling gear on the Atlantic or toiling in rust-red potato fields.
Bailey examines the world around him from the inside, observing the minute to account for the vast. These poems are laid bare and free of ornament, revealing the hard-won wisdom just below the surface:
She was there, cooked for you. Helped clean
the mess you’d become from decades
spent on your father’s ocean hauling lobsters
from its depths, gulping down the sea air.
Even when the booze was too much,
she knew you were more than the vomit
caked to your shirt. Less than confessions
made beneath the red summer moon.
About the author
Chris Bailey is a fisherman from North Lake, Prince Edward Island, and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. He is a recipient of the Milton Acorn Award for Poetry and his writing has appeared in UPEIArts Review, The Puritan’s Town Crier and on CBC Radio. Bailey now lives in Toronto where he is the managing editor of Villamere: the lowbrow magazine of high-end Can Lit.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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