Ancient Motel Landscapes

by Shauna McCabe

Shauna McCabe’s use of landscape is unique in its connection to the human spirit. These poems fuse the organic and the spiritual in a deeply sensitive manner. They are of the land and of the heart.

—Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief

These poems roll and surge and double back on themselves. These poems are a journey. These poems travel. These poems move in and out of memory and dream. They are whisky tongued, wild eyed, blue streaked. These poems are tender and watchful and deeply in love with the earth. These poems are rich with wood burr knots and black spruce shoulders. Don’t take my word for it. Read Shauna McCabe’s poems. They are beautifully alive.

—Patricia Young, author of Ruin & Beauty

Shauna McCabe’s poetry has a lyric heartbeat and a voice with the wary passion of the blues. She loves the shapes of all the passing landscapes, and in its quiet singing her poetry gives them meaning. She has, in her own phrase, a “tongue fluent in mysteries.”

—David Helwig, author of The Year One

Shauna McCabe’s latest poems read as fresh and inventive, even as they tap into the traditional verities of poetry resonant with acute personal observation, nifty ideas, and the very joy intrinsic to being alive, aware and articulate. There are touching stories to be discovered in her poems.

—Joseph Sherman, author of American Standard

Shauna McCabe lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Born in Quebec, she gained her literary bearings while a high school student in Saskatchewan. She subsequently studied at McGill University, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. Since moving to Prince Edward Island in 1998 where she is currently Senior Curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, she has worked to bring art and poetry to new audiences, developing the Charlottetown Poetry Fair and the Urban Poetry Mass. She was in CBC Radio One’s National Poetry FaceOff in 2003. For several years, she has been on the executive of the Prince Edward Island Writers’ Guild. McCabe is the author of several exhibition catalogues. Her poetry has been published in various journals including blue SHIFT, The Gaspereau Review, The Windsor Review, Inscape (USA), in the anthology Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land (2001), and in two poetry chapbook scene, road (Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2003) and land over time (above/ground press, 2005).

Cover & inside photos by the author.