Look Winter in the Face

A portrait, a balance sheet, a snapshot, a taste, a fragment, a slice, a share - of winter. "Look Winter in the Face" is all of these things. A book of poems written during and about one week of one winter, the events of everyday life are the subject matter: snowstorms, bird feeders, grocery shopping, fire hydrants, reading in the library, eating lunch. Their implications are weighed up and their value underlined. Whether serious or humorous, the poems in this collection have a message: pay attention to the ordinary things. Enjoy them. Laugh at them. Be frightened by them. But don't ignore them. Claudia McGill says about the process of writing this book: "I set myself a goal for winter, that of taking the season with more equanimity than I had in the recent past. Illness and trouble had left its mark on my mind and I needed to find ways to recover my equilibrium. In the winter, people stay inside. It's easy to feel afraid and sad. Writing these poems was a way to fight that feeling of being trapped during a closed-in time of year. I know it made a difference to me to have a voice and to use it." The book is divided into five sections, one for each day of work. The poems are arranged in the order of their writing. They can be taken in any sequence and enjoyed individually, or they can be read in succession as they appear.