Labyrinthine

By: Lesley-Anne Bourne

January 2004
80 pages | ISBN 0-919897-99-1
$15.00

Lesley-Anne Bourne has written a book of poems about the experience of loss and suffering, and of ultimate recovery from anorexia. In a few dozen spare poems, in images as clear as glass and as cutting, the poet paints a vivid picture of finding her way out of the long labyrinth of recovery. Her honesty and courage, and above all, her literary ability to describe what it is like to go through this harrowing illness, the loss of an unborn child, and the depression that follows, is both moving and admirable. She enmeshes her readers in her experience and leaves them astounded, yet ultimately filled with hope by this powerful work.


Two poems from The Blue Dress Labyrinth

(for Mary)

Blue dress wanted to stay little, wanted mother
and sometimes father, wished

true. Sorry for what the dress did
recently — it got as sick as she could be

eating contradictions.


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