(Marya Fiamengo is one of Canada's truly fine poets. For n...)
Marya Fiamengo is one of Canada's truly fine poets. For nearly four decades, she has been publishing poetry of unusual distinctiveness. Intelligent, richly evocative, formidable in its clarity, lyrical and yet austere, the voice in Fiamengos poems is like no other in Canadian poetry.
(Visible Living: Poems Selected and New presents a definit...)
Visible Living: Poems Selected and New presents a definitive selection of the best of Marya Fiamengo's work, ranging from her early writing to a large number of recent, previously unpublished verse. It enables readers to trace the development of Fiamengo’s voice and concerns, from early work based on exploration of myth to engagements with historical and political realities to feminist pieces to later elegies, to lyrics of highly personal statement on mortality and the divine and confirms her achievement and status in the highest rank of Canadian poets.
Marya Fiamengo taught in the English Department of University of British Columbia from 1962 until her retirement in 1993. As the author, her sometimes controversial writings include an exploration of the immigrant experience, as well as themes of feminism and Canadian nationalism. Fiamengo’s more recent works touch on religion, the power of arts and language, and friendships.
Fiamengo's early collection, In Praise of Old Women, was dedicated to "all those who struggle against the Americanization of Canada." The title poem depicts a male-led devaluation of older women and counters this philosophy with Fiamengo’s assertion that women gain strength with age. Other poems deal with the lives of immigrants and cultural differences between the United States and Canada. Ten years after her 1978 collection North of the Cold Star: New and Selected Poems was released, Fiamengo published Patience after Compline.
She is also the author of Three Poet Artists: Eldon Grier, P.K. Page, Joe Rosenblatt (1978), White Linen Remembered (1996), Visible Living: Poems Selected and New (2006), etc. Her work included in anthologies, including Poets 56: Ten Younger English-Canadians (1956), The Poets of Canada: D’Sonoqua, Woman's Eye, Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Forty Women Poets of Canada, Words We Call Home: Celebrating Creative Writing at UBC (1990), Inside the Poem (1992), etc.