A Pocket of Time
The Poetic Childhood of Elizabeth Bishop
Rita Wilson Emma FitzGerald
9781771088091
40 pages
Nimbus Publishing
Overview
There are, always, so many things to wonder about.
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) grew up to become a famous poet, but before that, she was a little girl who lived with her Gammie and Pa in Great Village, Nova Scotia. It was there that Bishop learned to walk, to read, to write, to sing hymns, and to catch bumblebees in foxglove flowers. It was there she first went to school and, when she was five, where her mother left and never returned.
Lovingly rendered, this visual and lyrical feast tells the story of Bishop's childhood days, inspired by Bishop's own poetry and prose and her time in Great Village, paired with eclectic collage-style artwork from illustrator Emma FitzGerald (EveryBody's Different on EveryBody Street). A love letter to words, A Pocket of Time is a lesson for young readers in finding the poetry in everything.
Author Bio
Rita Wilson is a writer, poet, teacher, mother, grandmother, and gardener who lives on the banks of the Caribou River in Nova Scotia. She's been published in: Saltscapes, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Cumberland Review; and received the Atlantic Poetry Prize. She first discovered Elizabeth Bishop at Bishop's grandparent's home in Great Village, and immediately imagined that house as the perfect framework to introduce Bishop and her words to children and parents.Emma FitzGerald is an author and illustrator. Her first book, Hand Drawn Halifax, documents her chosen home city, while Hand Drawn Vancouver (Spring 2020) explores the city she grew up in. Emma fell in love with Elizabeth Bishop's poetry when she first discovered it in 2013, and has since completed two residencies in Bishop's childhood home in Nova Scotia, and has visited various homes in Brazil that Bishop lived in, creating artwork as she went. This helped greatly when illustrating A Pocket of Time.
