The Cracking Apricot Pits to Flavour the Heart

Heather Simeney MacLeod's latest collection of poetry takes hold of memories, ancestors, family, and kin amid years spent in Canada's western provinces and northern territories, as well as Scotland's Shetland Isles and Highlands. Amidst the Michif Nation that is her heritage, MacLeod navigates the silt bluffs, watersheds, and archipelagos from Canada's north to Scotland's that inform a sinuous spill to her verse. MacLeod writes of the arctic, the interior of BC, the plains of the prairies, the inlets and deltas making of geography a rhythm and roll of memory. MacLeod's poetry is pulled by the coursing of generations and characterized by narratives and a compelling lyric intensity. These poems share a charged tone and agile focus upon the concentrated territory of memory, time, and death. "I was born into a world, like all the others/ filled with killing and chaos, burning and rain, / grace and beauty. And, I can still take a deep breath./ I am still breathing," MacLeod writes, and Cracking Apricot Pits to Flavour the Heart is an attempt to reveal the dense evocativeness of that world.