Marilyn Bowering Literary Event

Join us for a literary event with Marilyn Bowering to celebrate her new work, More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod.

More Richly in Earth is a compelling exploration of the mystery of a 17th century Scottish Gaelic bard and her intersection with a Canadian poet.

Important in the Gaelic world in Canada, as in Scotland, Mary MacLeod was widely honoured, especially by singers and poets; yet she was also marginalised, exiled, and even denigrated as a witch. Exiled because she wrote as well as for what she wrote, Mary stepped out of the approved roles of her era to preserve truths about deep culture and the role of women in it as Gaelic Scotland was reconfigured by colonisation.

About the author

Marilyn Bowering is a novelist, poet, and librettist; she is the author of four novels and numerous books of poetry. She is the winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Gwen MacEwen Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Prize, and the Dorothy Livesay Prize. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Prix Italia, and the Sony Award. Her work has been translated into numerous languages including Spanish, Finnish, German, Romanian, Russian, Greek, and Punjabi. In a review of her novel What it Takes to Be Human the Globe and Mail said of her “[Bowering] does not seek moments to be brilliant: those moments just arrive.” Marilyn Bowering lives in Victoria, BC.

Reviews

“More Richly in Earth has an intricate structure, weaving together memoir, conversation, poetry, and literary investigation. As we accompany Bowering on her search for Mary MacLeod, we are released with her into mystery’s delight.” Jan Zwicky

“This book is a major work: it deals in detail with the life and poetry of an important Gaelic poet of the 17th century; her place as a woman poet in a male-dominated society; it delves deeply into the nature of poetry, its sources and inspiration itself; makes correspondences between Canada and Scotland, particularly how her own journey as poet links to her childhood upbringing in British Columbia; it is a work of imagination and scholarship . . ..I highly recommend it.” Maoilios Caimbeul / Myles Campbell

“Both grand in scale and gorgeously, lyrically intimate, More Richly in Earth holds readers close along on Bowering’s search after a myth-shrouded Scottish poet. Yet at its heart, it is something more powerful, more mysterious. As though faced with a great tree on some weathered headland, we are captivated by the skyward questing of its branches, all the while its roots weave themselves down deep into the earth.” Patrick James Errington, author of The Swailing