Review of Vixen in The Toronto Star
Review of Vixen in The Winnipeg Free Press
Review of Vixen by Rob McLennan
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Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Sandra Ridley offers a breathtaking, harrowing immersion in cruelty behind different veils: ecological collapse, the medieval hunt, and intimate partner violence.
Sparked by a haunting chance encounter with a fox, and told in six chapters of varying form, Vixen is as visceral as it is mysterious, sensuous as it is terrifying. Expanding on her body of work, Ridley exposes the wild in the domestic, the hunt in the home, and the unrelenting nature of stalking. She compels us to examine the nature of empathy, what it means to be a compassionate witness, and what happens to us when brutality is so ever-present that we become numb.
Vixen is a beautiful, difficult, and fierce tapestry of defiance and survival.
Published by Book*Hug Press, 2023