Drawing Down a Daughter

Claire Harris has always been a formidable force and now her celebrated book-length poem is available once again in a new edition. In this dream-collage, which cuts across the boundaries of prose and poetry, she combines post-modernist influences with a fully realized narrative. Spanning a few days and several decades, Drawing Down a Daughter follows a woman-dreamer as she prepared to give birth. Speaking to her unborn daughter through journals, letters, stories, and eloquent imaginings, Harris's unnamed narrator calls up a distinctive cast of characters as she travels from the tropical warmth of the West Indies to Canada with its houses "iced in snow." Drawing Down a Daughter was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award in 1992.