What Fills Your House Like Smoke

Publisher's Description (Thistledown Press): 
What Fills Your House Like Smoke begins and ends at the deathbed of the writer’s Metis grandmother. In between, McGregor composes an incomplete and wildly imaginative biography of her grandmother, interrogated by family photographs, stories, and the scant paper trail she left behind. 

McGregor sifts through the complexities of motherhood, daughterhood, anxiety, intimate relationships and addiction, weaving family history with memory to make sense of what is carried on. Especially affecting are poems about childhood and the people who disappear from a child’s life, and the struggle to live as a societal outsider, finding strength in self-definition and the power of narrative. 

As these poems unfold, they move us toward an understanding of maternal inheritance, shifting identities, forgiveness, and finally love.

Author's Biography (Thistledown Press): 
E. McGregor is a Euro-Settler/Métis writer currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous magazines including Room, The Dalhousie Review, CV2, The Fiddlehead, and others. She obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 2022. What Fills Your House Like Smoke is her first poetry collection.

Resource type: Book (Fiction/Poetry)

Age recommendation: Grades 10-12, Post Secondary

Keywords: Grandmother, mother, matriarch, poetry, photography, photos, reflection, grandfather, family, bonds, connection, rememberance, Edmonton, children, gaze, men, women, girl, boy, biography, womanhood, daughterhood, girlhood, anxiety, addiction, outsider, outside, childhood, strength, identity, self-definition, identity, forgive, forgiveness, love, death, dying, alcohol, killing, kill

Year of publication: 2024

Publisher information: Thistledown Press