Description
By Wendy McGrath who is a Métis poet, writer, and artist living in amiskwacîwâska-hikan (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 Territory. She is the winner of the inaugural Prairie Grindstone Prize. Her writing embraces multiple genres-fiction, poetry, spoken word, and creative non-fiction in her Santa Rosa Trilogy, continues her exploration of the working-class. Illustrated by Danny Miles.
The interplay between photography, nature and poetic form is on full display in Wendy McGrath's and Danny Miles' collaborative new work The Beauty of Vultures. This innovative collection takes readers into the surprisingly chatty world of birds, whose avian artistry and poignant plumage mimics the formally and structurally inventive tones found in each poem. The language wings its way between funny and serious, poignant and morbid, while always drawing parallels between the poet's thoughts and the camera's eye. From peahens telling off their elaborately festooned romantic partners, robins' empty eggs recalling air raid tests after WWII, to seagulls serving as harbingers of humanity's ongoing crimes against nature, each unit of photography melds seamlessly with its poetic doppelgänger.