Foreign Homes

Lynn Szabo is an assistant professor of English and Coordinator of
Freshman English Courses at Trinity Western University.

Poet and novelist Joan Crate combines the artistry of both genres in her
second volume of published poems. The narrators of Foreign Homes tour
the carnage of lives stereotyped by the First Nation’s female voice,
victimized by males addicted to alcohol, irresponsibility, and absence
from domesticity. Crate’s poetic consciousness rises above the chaos
to capture astonishingly polished phrasings and images. In her tribute
to Shawnandithit, the last survivor of the Boethuk Nation in
Newfoundland, Crate’s speaker tells the story of a young woman
captured for white domestic labor and eventually buried in an
“Unmarked Grave,” in which “she is the silence / deep in the
permafrost / untouched by bursting spring.” Crate’s poetry admirably
fulfills its promise to rescue readers from the “tedious / white noise
of … life.”