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For National Poetry Month, we’re sharing poems from the shortlisted collections for the Alberta Reads Book Club. Today’s Monday poem is from Ghosts Still Linger by Kat Cameron. Kat Cameron’s poetry illuminates the unsung perspectives of the women of the West, creating a compelling narrative that reflects the poet’s own struggles with sorrow. She conjures ghosts and weaves together insights on loss, memory, and the impacts of boom and bust. Catherine Owen of Marrow Reviews notes that “Cameron’s poems simmer with a quiet ire amid their gentle songs.”
Glass Targets in a Museum
They always put women behind glass.
Annie smashed hundreds—amber or cobalt blue,
mold-blown by Agnew & Brown,
exploding in a shower of feathers
and sawdust that coated the crowds below.
In a shooting contest, she beat
Frank Butler by one shot
to win a hundred-dollar bet,
but Annie Get Your Gun changes
the story: she loses.
Annie, keep breaking those spheres
above our heads—targets clear as glass—
no tricks, no lies.
From Ghosts Still Linger by Kat Cameron (University of Alberta Press 2020)
Kat Cameron is the author of Strange Labyrinth and The Eater of Dreams. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies across Canada. She lives in Edmonton (Treaty 6).
At the end of National Poetry Month, we are giving away a prize pack containing the poetry collections from our Monday Poems series including Ghosts Still Linger by Kat Cameron. Sign up for our newsletter to win! If you’re already signed up, you’re already entered! This giveaway is open to Canadian residents.
Kat Cameron
Published: Feb 18, 2020 by University of Alberta Press
ISBN: 9781772125092
“No Definition of Alberta Culture is complete without recognizing the herculean efforts of Alberta publishers to bring the prodigious talents of Canadian writers to eager readers everywhere.”
~ Steve Budnarchuk, Audreys Books