The Shape of a Throat

In The Shape of a Throat, her second collection of poetry, Sheila Stewart is deeply attuned to the process of unearthing childhood memory and mapping the landscape of midlife. She meanders along High Park trails and carefully observes scenes in Toronto subways and cafes, as she wrestles with the complexity of having grown up in the United Church manse in small-town Ontario and living a writing life with a partner and teenaged children. She charts a path through a disquiet childhood, letting dreams and the unconscious shape her knowing. Her lyrical command creates a space for the reader to meditate, too, on the longing inherent in the relationships between self and other people and between self and nature. She asks, What does it mean to take another / into you?

Reflecting on the contours and im/possibilities of poetry, Stewart reveals the vulnerability needed to create new images and symbols. Her poetry will startle your senses and disrupt your sense of self. Stewart’s work captures the smell of ginger root, roasting garlic, crushed cardamom, the taste of nutmeg, the trouble with memory, a writer’s unreliability, the lie of the lake. The Shape of a Throat’s is a compelling mix of tenderness and power.