Reasons for Winter

By Naomi Guttman

Winner of the 1992 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (QSPELL, now the Quebec Writers Federation) and shortlisted for the 1991 Pat Lowther Award

Naomi Guttman's first collection of poems marks the appearance of a deeply emotional, highly intelligent new voice. Its theme is intimacy -- ours, especially women's, experience of intimacy in many forms, how it marks us, how we long for it, the ways in which it is both our fulfilment and our undoing. The personae range from children to old men and women, jailbirds to schoolgirls; the language is chosen without ever becoming deliberate, precise but always musical. These are poems from and of the heart, chastened by experience, taut with craft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Nov 1, 1991
• ISBN: 9781771312387

Naomi Guttman

Naomi Guttman's first book of poems, Reasons for Winter, won the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. Her second, Wet Apples, White Blood, was co-winner of the Adirondack Center for Writing's Best Book of Poems for 2007. The Banquet of Donny & Ari: Scenes from the Opera is her third poetry collection. Raised in Montreal, she now teaches creative writing at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY.