Veronica Eley

The author discovered poetry through journaling. She learned to “stream the inner spirit, the unconscious” through a process of “fluid connection between my soul, brain, pen and paper.” Poems gave structure and pace to her feelings, sparking a “creative remembering” of trauma and recovery. Ideas of synchronicity and flow, an attunement to nature, and the stories of her immigrant and refugee students provided rich support. The author’s family had migrated to Nova Scotia in 1952. Dislocation shock, charismatic Catholicism, and the metempsychotic memory of the cotton mills would repose themselves in the youngest child. Her personal “trinity of traumas” would follow. The small-press publication of her book, aided by her poetic camera, accumulates readers. The author declines interviews, as “the poems speak for themselves.”

Born 1950, Manchester UK. Adult literacy instructor, Toronto, 1994-2011. Master of Education, OISE-UT, Toronto, 2002. Retired, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, 2016. First book of poetry, 2021.