Author: Pat Smekal

Release Date: December 1, 2023

Publisher: Repartee Press

Pages: 78

ISBN: 978-1-7380830-0-8

About the Book

A retrospective of Pat Smekal’s poetry, along with some newer  additions. Celebrate with Pat as she welcomes you into the arc of her experience—her loves, losses, triumphs, and  grumbles, her celebration of Nature and the natural… but most of all,  the wisdom she discovers and gently leads us toward through the gift, and eloquence, of her words.

There is a shapeshifter trickster fast at work in this invigorating collection of poems by Vancouver Island poet Pat Smekal.  Each of her poems a marvel, sometimes of seriousness, sometimes of fun, but always powered by her beginner’s eyes, her undivided attention to the surprising thisness of our world. To read these poems, filled with the extraordinary things of the everyday, is to risk remembering your own beginner’s eyes. I invite you to take that risk; to see the world as if for the first time, again. — Richard Osler, author of Hyaena Season, Duncan, BC

A sparkling collection of poetic gems and reflections on life, death, love, and loss. Smekal’s masterful language is lush, playful, and precise. Her humour and humanity ripple outward and resonate within. Highly recommended. — Judy Millar, author of Other Than That, I’m Fine

Ripples breathes with the comfort of well-worn linen. Poems penned at different waypoints in the author’s life gather and fall into an easy companionship in this collection as if recognizing, despite what separates them, shared threads of reflection, appreciation, and laughter. It is a book textured with memories yet finely attuned to what lives and gives us hope in the moment. In short, Ripples is cut from strong cloth. — Anne Marie Carson, author of Interchange