Nellie McClung

Nellie McClung’s poems in Come Dance With Me In Ireland are imbued with intelligence, humour and compassion. We read in her poem “Eric Christ” of a spiritual young man from Quebec who “summers in Canada” before continuing on to California. We join McClung in “Downing Daquiris with Fidel & Discussing Moncada,” in which we see Fidel Castro made ordinary through the poet’s comic eye. We enjoy “Spice Box”—a title that alludes to Leonard Cohen—which is also McClung’s tribute to the poets and poems that moved her, including Keats, Coleridge, W.C. Williams, Ginsberg, Lorca and Shelley; she makes all of them seem like her personal friends. And that’s the beauty of Nellie McClung’s poems: it is her ability to make the world more familiar, human and engaging. In the poetry of Nellie McClung we can enjoy a good laugh, or a good cry. “Thank you Poetry,” she writes, “for what you have given me/ Where you have led me.” This Selected Poems is a testament to McClung’s vision, which is one of love and reverence for all living beings.
~ Stephen Morrissey

Poet Nellie McClung shared the same name with her famous suffragette grandmother. She lived in Vancouver, BC and took her inspiration from the mountains and the sea. Nellie McLung published numerous books and chapbooks during her life, including My Sex is Ice Cream and Salt Whistle Bay (both from Ekstasis Editions). She passed away in 2009.