The Debt (Poems)

Abstract

The Debt is a collection of poems exploring tensions between tradition and innovation, between past and present. Set largely against the backdrop of post-moratorium St. John’s, Newfoundland, the collection is based on my own experiences as the product of a province unmoored by loss and grief. The opening long poem, “Crown,” sets the tone for the project, juxtaposing formal verse and prose poetry in a vernacular commentary on culture and social class. The Debt is about development and change, idleness and activism, ecological stewardship, feminism, motherhood, the personal and the political. It is also about resistance—against the encroaching forces of greed and capitalism, even against the accumulated notions of the self. The poems are an argument for community and connection in an age increasingly associated with isolation of the individual. The Debt explores the dues we all owe: to nature, to those who came before us, and to one another.