New Releases by Pamela Porter

One moment, she was living her everyday, active life. The next, she collapsed in her home and, within 24 hours, heard these chilling words from her doctor: "We can''t do anything for you here." Just like that, her life unraveled. But even as her name was added to the liver transplant list, God was preparing a different kind of healing. A spiritual army of friends, family, and church members rose up to intercede with Scripture and prayer. And God did the impossible! Walking in Grace is the unforgettable testimony of one woman''s miraculous healing. Through her raw story and the powerful verses that sustained her, readers will find strength, encouragement, and faith for their own valleys. Whether you or someone you love is facing a devastating diagnosis, this book offers more than inspiration; it offers evidence that God still heals.

How does the rain sleep and where does the silence go? In her latest book of poetry, Between the Bell Struck and the Silence, Governor-General-Award-winning Pamela Porter contemplates the mysteries of existence. Porter skillfully reimagines familiar emotions: joy, loss, and healing are made new through descriptions of the flight of music, the spirits that dance between dusk and dawn, the blessings of coyotes and chickadees. Themes of Christian theology and the life and work of Van Gogh are woven throughout this rich tapestry of philosophical exploration and the healing powers of art. Between the Bell Struck and the Silence is a profound offering that delves into the essence of what it means to be an artist and to experience the striking state of being alive, with all of its joys and sorrows. With this introspective collection, Porter invites a generous appreciation for the world and life itself.

"The ways of war in the Middle Ages never cease to fascinate. There is a glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds which appeals to the modern imagination. Because medieval warfare had its colourful side it is easy to overlook the face that war was a very serious business in an age when brute force was the recognised way of settling a quarrel, and conflict formed a normal way of life at every level of society.0This book illustrates the art of war with dozens of medieval images from books and manuscripts, and reveals a wealth of social and military background on heraldry, armour, knights and chivalry, castles, sieges, and the arrival of gunpowder.0This new edition is completely revised with a selection of new illustrations from the British Library''s medieval manuscripts."--Dust jacket.

Poetry. Pamela Porter says of this new collection--her fifth with Ronsdale Press--"I knew then what was required--that I must carry the rest of the story." In DEFENDING DARKNESS, starting over is a constant theme as she explores what wisdom can be gained in "waiting on the heart to finish her grieving," and then to move on--across borders, through time, even into eternity. What these poems accomplish is to carry the adversity we all must endure with a kind of singing that is "older than praise, younger than light, cousin to regret, sister to fate," and finally, to declare, "We were instruments of music, every one... we sang for a season." With such singing, even darkness itself can be defended. Pamela Porter has been praised for her deeply redemptive poetry and its deceptively simple style, which has been said to "evoke the poetics of Rilke." Powerful, searing, lyrical, DEFENDING DARKNESS is surely a book to treasure.

Finalist for the Governor General''s Award for Children''s Illustration In this delightful bedtime rhyme a young child bids good night to the moon, recalling all the familiar things surrounding her -- from her pillow, her book and her kitten to the swing outside, the robins in the trees and the starry night. Written by award-winning novelist and poet Pamela Porter, the book is complemented by the swirling, joyful and whimsical illustrations of Matt James, an acclaimed visual artist. The words and music for "At the Gate of Heaven" ("A la puerta del cielo"), a New Mexican lullaby, are included.

Poetry. In this breathtaking collection of poems, Pamela Porter invokes the twin mysteries of love and loss to illumine the heart burdened by grief, yet comforted and renewed by the beauty of the natural world. In the long poem "Atonement," Porter takes us into a human drama, rich with astonishments: "There was no snow, but you could say the snow buries everything, and you''d be right." In simple language at once lyrical and powerful, these poems are a meditation on vulnerability--"how fragile we are, a word shatters us"--on nature, where plum blossoms are "kissed eyelids, moths, / the night''s numberless secrets, / little messengers that whisper, release," and on the heart''s ability to mend, even under the most difficult circumstances. To love deeply, to grieve and, ultimately, to praise, carries us into the country of possibility, where we "begin again / to name each thing; Say water. Say breath. / Say empty. Say heart," and ultimately, arrive, changed and blinking in the light.

This stunning collection will break your heart and put it back together again, as Pamela Porter unravels a long-held family secret in a moving personal search for redemption, face to face with the question of her own identity. As she says, "It was this way when Rome was burning, / and was not so different / when dark fires flared / outside the walls of Eden." These poems brim with deep longing, remorse, the beauty of the natural world, an abiding thirst for the truth, and finally, acceptance and peace, as when there is "a choir of foxes, out from their hollow / in the early dark, / yipping, yipping and singing, / praising the bright, the unkempt world." Late Moon is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and to the transformative power of language - with Porter writing to rise "above the grief-stricken world/ and sing all night."

In 1941, the four Loney children, orphaned and alone in a small Saskatchewan prairie town, manage to pull themselves up and survive under the watchful eye of a pair of ghosts.

Cathedral takes us on a journey -- a very personal journey of Pamela Porter''s own -- to Africa and South America, those corners of the world the news reports rarely seem to cover. Winner of the Governor General''s Award for The Crazy Man, Porter here gives us another book to treasure

The remarkable accomplishment of this book is that it dwells so intimately onnature in all of its facets, even the making of art, that one emerges from itwith the feeling of having been lifted into another realm.--John Skoyles.

A powerful first collection of poems which bear witness to difficult lives in Latin America, in the mining towns of the USA, in prairie families ruined by hardship and losses and incest. Pamela Porter''s poetry has both gravitas and grace, it speaks about important matters beyond the personal and domestic concerns of the writer herself, yet many of the poems fall within the personal narrative tradition. These poems are earthy and metaphysical, personal and universal, geographically and historically diverse. The details are beautifully, often hauntingly, realized. Porter keeps her own sense of outrage in check, creating startling and invasive images and refusing to trespass by bludgeoning or imposing a response on the reader. There''s an undercurrent of hope, of confidence in individuals'' capacity to survive and make meaningful lives in the wake of tragedy. We come to the end of the book disturbed, deeply stirred, but not devastated.

When the huge flood of 1964 hits their small community in Georgia and destroys everything her family ever possessed, eleven-year-old Georgia finds the rebuilding process difficult until the arrival of a wounded foal, and its incredible recovery, changes her outlook on what really matters in life. Reprint.

Illustrations drawn from medieval manuscripts provide insight into courtly love, the stylised and idealistic relationship between a chivalrous knight and his lady.