The Chick at the Back of the Church

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

Billie Livingston has published poetry in various literary magazines and
journals around the world since 1992, and is the author of the
well-received novel Going Down Swinging. Born in Toronto, she now lives
in Vancouver. Both settings appear in this debut collection, which deals
with subjects many people would prefer to ignore: abortion, adultery,
battered wives, and dysfunctional families.

In a matter-of-fact way, and without a trace of sentimentality,
Livingston brings to life the welfare family, the street walker, the
abused wife. There are glimpses of love, as when the poet wonders at her
pregnant sister’s belly or describes her aging parents. In “Black
and White,” there is the suggestion that the 17-year-old who is posing
nude for a 40-year-old photographer will, in the end, triumph. In
Livingston’s poems of hardship and setbacks, the female speaker
evinces a self-sufficiency that seems, at times, almost heroic.