Poetry collections (digital collection)
"Lyrical and deeply evocative, Melinda Cochrane's poetry calls demons to the dance floor and brings the mighty to their knees. She's an Island Poet beautifully captures the spirit of Islandness, in general, and Newfoundland, in particular. She celebrates the struggles of place and people as the very loom on which their inner fibres are woven. This is an intensely human and honest collection that will leave you changed." Dr. Ellyn Lyle, author and lecturerUniversity of Prince Edward IslandIn She's An Island Poet Melinda Cochrane, with a brush of both reflection and soul-full imagination, in buoyant colour paints an incredible landscape of both person and place.In this collection of poetry and poetic prose, she gently but vigilantly reminds both herself and us not of a distant place beyond or a place without, but instead perhaps in each of us a place within. She takes us there effortlessly throughout this collection with passages like "The ocean currents brought me back and I knew the worded memories. I found the washed stones in my shoes and the velvet sofa of my grandmother...", and "...we do not, go into the interior without knowing the rules of nature,//we rhythm with it,...".This is a wonderful and poignant collection of word, image and reflection, with number on number of simply remarkable poems and short works of prose, but in particular the opening letter to the island, "Her Letter" and the section of poems, "Freedom" -undeniably brilliant.Bruce Kauffman, Author of The Texture of Days, in Ash and Leaf The Man Who Stole Father’s Boat Melinda Cochrane evokes the geography, history, politics, and sociology of Newfoundland and Labrador with the kind of hardy and hard-edged truthfulness that characterizes so much of the vital and unique culture of the province some call the Rock. Melinda’s poetic narratives conjure a world that is craggy and wind-swept and storm-tossed. In poetry that pulses with the creative energies of story, image, music, emotion, and voice, Melinda tells the truth about growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador from the perspective of being poor. Her poems and stories resonate with lingering and haunting rhythms like ocean waves playing percussion on beach stones. Melinda invokes a world that is chaotic and challenging, but because of her courageous willingness to call out in a voice that is poetic and prophetic, she also ultimately spells a portrait of life in Newfoundland and Labrador that is profoundly hopeful, never nostalgic or romantic. This book has been fired in the heart, and hammered in the imagination, and it is offered as a gift of sturdy wisdom that can sustain us in addressing urgent contemporary issues of class privilege and social justice, especially through education as creative, liberating, and transformative. Dr. Carl Leggo, poet and professor and Newfoundlander University of British Columbia
