Overview

A long poem in six sections, Dream House takes its cue from Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space in its investigation of female embodiment by calling up such feral, liminal spaces as the pregnant body, the aging mind, snail shells, broom closets, low-ceilinged pubs and abandoned pizza boxes. Part Tardis, part townhouse, part Howl's moving castle, this wry, surreal and many-peopled narrative interrogates what metaphor might hold of history, both personal and social, in the wake of a mother's passing. Its migrant speaker trawls through hedgerows and recipe books to unearth stained birdsong and undead civil wars, intent on tracing a matrilineal path across four generations while traversing the haunted margins between existence and belonging.

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9780889714625

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Reviews

"""Cathy Stonehouse's Dream House, like any magical dwelling, is not what it at first appears to be. Walk inside. Explore its rooms. It is larger and more expansive than you might think. Also stranger, more peculiar, idiosyncratic. It is a metaverse of possibilities, the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined. As Stonehouse herself puts it, 'The house is a cocoon, an open coffin. It is full of weather, and changes / every time you dare to look.' Open the door. Close your eyes. The operative word is not house but dream. Look around. You are already there."" --Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 ""From the British nightmare to the shores of British Columbia, there's something deeply unwholesome going on in the details of this Dream House. Stonehouse nails what it's like to bring ghosts who will not rest from one hallucinatory place to the next. 'Sit down, whispers the Pacific. You are not from here/ Stand up, whispers the Atlantic. You are not from here...' This is a deeply affecting collection you will not want to miss--and will certainly not forget."" --Elizabeth Bachinsky, author of The Hottest Summer in Recorded History ""In Dream House, Cathy Stonehouse trips the latch to a secret door, exposing a network of hidden passages 'shiny with private meaning.' Amidst the very real furnishings--tea towel, ceramic hen, nursery rhyme, commemorative plate, a mechanical contraption for slicing eggs--these shifting interiors bewilder and estrange until 'everything has been refurbished.' This book is an enchantment, conjured by an imaginative and deeply original poet who knows intuitively that 'what matters when transcribing are the elisions...'"" --Sheryda Warrener, author of Test Piece -- ""Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020"""

""Cathy Stonehouse's Dream House, like any magical dwelling, is not what it at first appears to be. Walk inside. Explore its rooms. It is larger and more expansive than you might think. Also stranger, more peculiar, idiosyncratic. It is a metaverse of possibilities, the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined. As Stonehouse herself puts it, 'The house is a cocoon, an open coffin. It is full of weather, and changes / every time you dare to look.' Open the door. Close your eyes. The operative word is not house but dream. Look around. You are already there."" --Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020 ""From the British nightmare to the shores of British Columbia, there's something deeply unwholesome going on in the details of this Dream House. Stonehouse nails what it's like to bring ghosts who will not rest from one hallucinatory place to the next. 'Sit down, whispers the Pacific. You are not from here/ Stand up, whispers the Atlantic. You are not from here...' This is a deeply affecting collection you will not want to miss--and will certainly not forget."" --Elizabeth Bachinsky, author of The Hottest Summer in Recorded History ""In Dream House, Cathy Stonehouse trips the latch to a secret door, exposing a network of hidden passages 'shiny with private meaning.' Amidst the very real furnishings--tea towel, ceramic hen, nursery rhyme, commemorative plate, a mechanical contraption for slicing eggs--these shifting interiors bewilder and estrange until 'everything has been refurbished.' This book is an enchantment, conjured by an imaginative and deeply original poet who knows intuitively that 'what matters when transcribing are the elisions...'"" --Sheryda Warrener, author of Test Piece -- ""Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020""

"Cathy Stonehouse's Dream House, like any magical dwelling, is not what it at first appears to be. Walk inside. Explore its rooms. It is larger and more expansive than you might think. Also stranger, more peculiar, idiosyncratic. It is a metaverse of possibilities, the locus where what is lived intersects with what is imagined. As Stonehouse herself puts it, ""The house is a cocoon, an open coffin. It is full of weather, and changes / every time you dare to look."" Open the door. Close your eyes. The operative word is not house but dream. Look around. You are already there. -- ""Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020"""

Author Information

Cathy Stonehouse (she/they) is a poet, writer, teacher and visual artist. As a young adult, Cathy migrated from Northern England, where she was born, to Vancouver, BC--the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, where she still lives. She is the author of a novel, The Causes (Pedlar Press, 2019), a collection of short fiction, Something About the Animal (Biblioasis, 2011) and two previous collections of poetry, Grace Shiver (Inanna Publications, 2011) and The Words I Know (Press Gang, 1994). She also co-edited the anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008), with Fiona Tinwei Lam and Shannon Cowan. She is a previous editor of EVENT magazine and currently teaches creative writing and interdisciplinary expressive arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. Find her online at www.cathystonehouse.com.

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