Candice de Taeye
ISBN 9781771262644
$18.00 CDN/USA 118 pages
Candace de Taeye’s Pronounced/Workable bears witness to life, a fast-paced every day of a woman, mother, and paramedic working through the pandemic. Here, poetry is drawn into a crown of sonnets, from Toronto cityscapes, and in relation to patients, people, and protocols. Poetry that pulls no punches. “All roles defined within this document. / Heron and blood. Huron and Bloor / landmarks the Unknown Student./ We are treating people. We are all treaty / people. Triage report an oral history.” Harrowing and brave; illuminating and haunting.
—Hoa Nguyen, author of A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
The poems in Pronounced/Workable are striking their humanity, holistic understanding, and maturity. The poet possesses the ability to address complex human transformations from many perspectives and to take head-on medical language and ideas not only in a metaphorical or ornamental sense, but with the weight of experience and knowledge. At the risk of diminishing the horror and difficulty of working the profession of the paramedic, I think to myself: how lucky are readers who come under this poet’s care, whether in need of medical attention or poetic revelation, or both.
—Madhur Anand, author of Parasitic Oscillations and winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award.
In the realm of Canadian medical poetry, doctors tend to dominate—which is why it is so refreshing that a collection of pre-hospital care poems has finally arrived in Canada. de Taeye the paramedic-poet ‘trusts that people are good’ while often encountering their less-than-good natures, writing poems of the body while interrogating the commonplace, “Women’s poetry always / of the body?” This collection freights paramedic shop talk with intimacies of city, making for a fine debut.
— Shane Neilson, author of New Brunswick
Candace de Taeye’s poetry has been previously published in Arc, BAD NUDES, Carousel, CNQ, CV2, Grain, Vallum and others. She very recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She has published two chapbooks ‘Roe’ and ‘The Ambulance Act’. During the day, and more often at night she works as a paramedic in Toronto’s downtown core. She lives in Guelph with her partner, kids, some geriatric treefrogs and a 25 lb tortoise.
