Poetry Reading: The Art of Dying

Free Times Cafe, 320 College Street, Toronto, ON
View Larger Map ›

Join Sarah Tolmie for a reading from her latest collection of poetry, The Art of Dying, as part of the Arts Bar Reading Series at Free Times Cafe.

Sarah Tolmie’s second collection of poems is a traditional ars moriendi, a how-to book on the practices of dying. Confronting the fear of death head-on, and describing the rituals that mitigate it, the poems take a satirical look at the ways we explain, enshrine, and, above all, evade death in contemporary culture. A thoughtful and irreverent collection about serious concerns, The Art of Dying begins and ends with the fact of death, and strips away our euphemisms about it.

Sarah Tolmie is associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her books poetry collection Trio was shortlisted for the 2016 Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

The Art of Dying is #41 in the McGill-Queen's Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series. Launched in 1998, the series is named in honour of the late Hugh MacLennan, acclaimed Canadian novelist and a poet in his own right. It is funded by proceeds from the intellectual property of Hugh MacLennan's estate, which he donated to McGill University. View other titles in the series >