Edge collects thirty years of essays, reviews, and interviews by celebrated Newfoundland poet Mary Dalton. Driven by a need to reconfigure how the margin is seen in literature, culture and politics, Dalton explores the work of writers and artists who occupy an imaginative threshold or edge: from the dark visions of Samuel Beckett to the dialogue novels of I. Compton-Burnett, from the apocalyptic Boatman paintings of fellow artist Gerald Squires to the vernacular poetry of John Steffler. Showcasing a use of language as vivid, precise, and supple as that in Daltons award-winning poetry, Edge reflects the range of a major Canadian poets interests and influences and celebrates what she calls people being grounded in their place, people knowing where they were, who they were, having a sense of connection to the land.
Mary Dalton has published five volumes of poetry, including Merrybegot (2003) and Red Ledger (2006), and Hooking (2014). Her work has been widely anthologized in Canada and abroad. Dalton has won numerous awards, including the E.J. Pratt Award (the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award), and has been shortlisted for the Winterset, Pat Lowther, Atlantic Poetry Award, the inaugural J. M. Abraham Award, and the inaugural Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She lives in St. Johns, Newfoundland.
Daltons lifelong work is not yet done on the edge (and in the centre) of writing culture; the multiplicity of her writing on culture, art, literature, language, and community makes Edge a genially obstreperous archive unabashed in its love for cultural creation and equally, and importantly, disdainful of artistic pretence. Tanis MacDonald, The Malahat Review
there is a thorough exploration of Newfoundlands spoken culture, its suppression and renewal by varied figures, including [Dalton] herself, while ruminating on the edge between margin and centre. Simon Vigneault, Atlantic Books Today
