The Debut Poetry Collection
THE HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN
McGill-Queens University Press: Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series
A beautifully wrought narrative collection rooted in a Celtic love of story; a lyrical collage as portrait of a place and those who passed through it; the natural world as inseparable from human experience. Epic, elegy, and homage to an ancestral farm, its ghosts, and the indelible memories of childhood.
144 pages that will stay with you long after the last line.
DARK TIDE, from this collection, won first prize in the Dr. Henry William Drummond (Canada's first national poet) Poetry Contest in 2022.
Also a
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Praise and Publicity
"McIntyre has not only a lyrical gift, but she is able to pack a lifetime into one page.[ She] weaves the same magic again and again. Her world is utterly convincing and compelling. I do not find myself weeping at Canadian poetry (except for tears of frustration), but there were moments when I had to put this book down as McIntyre’s lyricism, her understanding, her empathy, and her courage were just too piercing. An absolutely beautiful book that has restored my faith in contemporary Canadian poetry.” - Jurors for Concordia First Book Prize - Quebec Writer's Federation
https://torontolife.com/culture/sixteen-things-to-see-do-read-and-hear-in-toronto-this-december/o
16. In The House You Born In, the candid debut poetry collection from Tanya Standish McIntyre, she writes about the loss of ancestral farmlands and intergenerational relationships, all while bringing to light the broken pieces of a forgotten past. With vivid imagery, McIntyre takes readers to Way’s Mills, Quebec, and offers a glimpse into the conditions of the working-class community where she grew up.
“Explorations of family and consciousness carve a sure path through the tangled thickets of the past in The House You Were Born In, allowing Quebec’s Eastern Townships to emerge not just as backdrop but as character. Each trenchant, graceful poem illuminates a time and a place, as though a light shone from behind memory.”
- Mark Abley, The Tongues of Earthho
“With gorgeous imagery and endless compassion for her subjects, Tanya Standish McIntyre captures both the fear and the beauty of growing up in a rural working-class community.”
- Carolyn Rowell, TILT Writer’s Cooperative
“Barns and sheds, old chesterfields, pond ice, damselflies, graveyards and ghosts - rarely have these words been so evocative, so glorious. From Quebec’s Eastern Townships comes an arresting new voice.” - Shelley Pomerance, arts journalist
“Lucid, sharp, and crisp as spring water, calling to mind Dillard in an arching narrative.”
- David Gow, award-winning Canadian playwright
“Tanya Standish McIntyre is ‘a keeper of things forgotten.’ A haunting debut collection.”
- Louise Abbott, author of The Heart of the Farm