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In Cameron's evocative opening poem, a young woman, temporarily deprived of her eyesight, pushes herself deep into inner space, letting the darkness unfold around her until the "boundaries of skin" dissolve and personal identity is fractured "like a galaxy into constellations." The poems that follow explore what can happen when you dare to "keep your eyes open in the dark." They touch on violence, mortality, and mourning. But they also open the space of darkness to reveal its potential for intimacy, its rich eroticism, and its promise of liberation in a world without visual boundaries. Combining the intensity of the lyric with the scope of the long poem, Holding the Dark invites us to rethink our conventional concepts of darkness and enter the sensuous night.

Melanie Cameron was born in Kitchener-Waterloo in 1971, has grown up within several communities, and now makes her home in Winnipeg. Holding the Dark is her first book, and it was shortlisted for the Eileen MacTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer. Cameron has been shortlisted twice for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer (1999, 2001).