Other Houses

by Kate Cayley

From acclaimed fiction writer and playwright Kate Cayley - poems that illuminate the deep strangeness of the familiar. In Other Houses , Kate Cayley's second collection of poetry, objects are alive with the presence of the people who have handled them. Myths and legends are interwoven with daily life. Visionaries, mystics, charlatans, artists, and the dead speak to us like chatty neighbours. An imaginary library catalogues missing people. Reading becomes a way of remembering the dead. Home is an elsewhere we are "called to," a mystery that impels children to wander off, and adults to grow in unexpected directions. Cayley couples a rich, meaty lyricism with the intimacy of direct address, creating a poetry that is at once embodied and spectral. She directs us to wonder, "Did light and dark have a taste and texture, like food?" At the same time, her command of voice and narrative is masterful - each of these poems unfolds with the sweep and precision of a compressed novel. ?Walking alone, you come upon a single glove, or shoe, pressed into the light snow. Or find a handprint on the wrong side of a windowpane. Or find a collection of marbles, still grouped carefully together in the backyard. Messages. (from "The Library of the Missing") Praise for Other Houses : "Beware of Kate Cayley. With an agility stolen from some other world she flicks this one open and invites us to watch our certainties scuttling away. Predatory and unsettling, these exquisitely crafted poems suggest that we are at our most human when yearning to reach beyond the visible." - Martha Baillie

Genres: Poetry, Canada

64 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2017

About the author

Kate Cayley is the artistic director and co-founder of For Stranger Theatre. The Hangman in the Mirror is her first novel for young adults. Her writing, including poetry and short fiction, has appeared in a variety of literary magazines. She is currently the writer in residence at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cayley's Other Houses is a very precise book of poems often touching on famous figures in history. The language is brief and concise, but still retains much lyricism. Plus there were some interesting history lessons in here!

[Andrea MacPherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because everything she writes is magic.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this, in particular the section about missing people and the poems about people who believed they were Christ.