Public Works is poet Ronna Bloom's third collection of poetry. In it, several themes emerge: 1. The private experience of the public (the idea that everything we experience -- a book, a speech, a hospital, a religion, water running into the taps -- we experience privately) ;2. The public role of the poet (as in Ginsberg's lines: "While I'm here,I'll do the work/and what's the work?/To ease the pain of living"); and 3. The placement of the individual in a wider context (the places we findourselves inhabiting: a body, a house, a job, a memory, as in the common phrase on maps in shopping malls: "You Are Here".) Some poems address overlapping themes: physical location in a body, astreet, a city; and recognition of one's own response to the institutions or services found there. Bloom is interested in the way individuals move back and forth between and within the public/private landscape. These poems, moving through personal, physical and social realms, chart the uneven, uncertain trajectory of a life. About the Author: Ronna Bloom is a self-employed poet who works in hospitals and universities. She leads workshops there, prescribes poems, and writes them on the spot. Permiso (Pedlar Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Bengali and broadcast on CBC Radio. Her She is currently Poet in Community at University of Toronto, and Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. An active psychotherapist, Bloom lives in Toronto.
www.ronnabloom.com |
