Product Description
In 1999 and 2000, two Victoria teenagers were convicted of the murder of their schoolfellow, fourteen-year-old Reena Virk. Of the more than 500 drawings she prepared as courtroom artist for the trials, Heather Spears has selected some 50 to accompany the poems that record her experience of the process. As poet and as artist, Spears bears witness throughout her work to the plight of young people under stress. ... Read more

Product Description
Collection of poetry, illustrated by author, Winner ofPat Lowther Award, 1986. ... Read more

Product Description
From the Introduction:Drawing Canadian poets in performance has always been my particular pleasure. It’s different from making a formal portrait –– the poet is there but not static –– involved and moving with the poem in personal, intimate ways I can hone in on if I pay close enough attention. It is a special way of listening.
Heather Spears

This long awaited and unique anthology of Canadian poetry offers a glimpse of poets in action through the expressive drawings of poet/artist Heather Spears. Fifty of Canada’s most revered contemporary poets contemplate the subject of ‘line’ – lines of poetry, landscape or art – each poem accompanied by a pencil portrait of a moment of performance during a literary event. Heather Spears’ line drawings have an active, kinetic quality –– highly gestural, the lines move and merge with the lines of poetry on the page. The reader has the sense of being present in the audience, as a succession of poets take the stage. Line by Line is an important chronicle of Canadian literature and literary figures of our day. Including poetry by:
Margaret Atwood
Joe Blades
George Bowering
Mick Burrs
Jocko
Sarah Klassen
Lionel Kearns
Pat Lane
Christopher Levenson
Daniel David Moses
Jay MacPherson
Colin Morton
Roger Nash
John Oughton
P.K. Page
James Reaney
Ajmer Rode
Stan Rogal
Linda Rogers
Joe Rosenblatt
Jay Ruzesky
Stephen Scobie
Joseph Sherman
Glen Sorestad
Heather Spears
Phil Thompson
Peter Trower
Patricia Young
Terence Young
Phyllis Webb
and many others ... Read more

Product Description
Moonfall by Canadian author Heather Spears is a sensitive, poetic and apolyptic vision of the future where technology exists as a mere remnant of a destroyed world, conjoined twins are the norm and the orbit of the moon is decaying, threatening all life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Enraptured by Moonfall
Heather Spears is a very complicated and disturbing writer, artist and human being. Her "other" career (as an artist) has often been to draw sketches of children in situations of great trauma such as at birth or with facial deformities or the Palestinian children of the Intifada ... maimed, wounded and hospitalized, often fatally.Moonfall is not exactly a book.It is a genre of its own, part poetry, part dream, part science fiction, part prayer ... this small book, first of a trilogy, is an intuitive comment about the direction in which the world is heading.As such it is a remarkable testimony to Spears' com/passionate belief in the ability of humans to care for one another above all else.This is also the book's eloquent message, healing and teaching.Every person in the story except one is a conjoined twin.The characters reveal an empathy and connection with one another which is quite extraordinary, although most fear and reject Tasman, the singleton.Spears' language is metaphor.One almost feels as if one is thinking or feeling the book rather than reading it.But really, to experience Moonfall is to transport yourself to a place beyond words.I highly recommend this book.I found it enrapturing.

Contains some nice weirdness and thoughts.
An unusually creative and strangely unsettling book, Moonfall takes place in a world populated entirely by conjoined twins except for the main character. Spears's perspective of such a sociaty is interesting and thewriting is very clear and well done. Although not classic science-fiction,Moonfall is enjoyable and worth reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Shadows of Wuthering Heights - tender & powerfully written
Three haunting violent deaths - an actual history that evokes shadows of Wuthering Heights.
In The Flourish, well-known artist and author Heather Spears spirits the reader away into 1880's Scotland, where small-village lives are both enriched and twisted by familial duty - bound within the lessons of piety, proper conduct and compartmentalized social status.
A village family makes room in their home for a bereaved niece, now alone after her brother and then her father have died. Charlotte is a young Scottish spinster with glowing red hair - endowed with musical gifts, intelligence, imagination, forthrightness - and a toughness and determination to work and set her own life-course.

So--is this another 1800's period romance novel about a woman in reduced circumstances struggling to achieve independence and find true love? Absolutely not!! Heather Spears is an author to be reckoned with - luring us into her unflinching tour de force of meticulous research and story telling, undertaken with empathy and respect for her own family history.
This very human drama is that best of unforgettable reading experiences - a simple tale of rich inner life .. a very promising life of active endeavor, nurtured by scraps of dreams and realistic hopes and love. And, although burdened by deadening rounds of daily tasks accepted as one's moral duty, Charlotte's surrounding world is enrapturing as recreated by the author in all its stark beauty - gaslights and candle-lit rooms, moonlight along the river path, fire-warmed meeting halls, storms and ice. The harsh seasons always pass, giving way to the softly exquisite promise of "The flourish" when swelling buds burst forth - joy alive.

But Charlotte is unaware of another gathering force, entrapping her - the derangement of chronic illness with its enforced solitude and desolation of hopes tumbling into a maze of weakness and anger - a force that will set the conditions for a night of tragedy in this quiet village.
Like a sip of aged single-malt, this book rings true and stays with you. ... Read more

Product Description
Selected from 6 former collections with new poems. ... Read more

Product Description
In the second book of the Moonfall Trilogy, the storycontinues in a post-holocaust world inhabited by bicephalichumans--twins sharing the same body. With the birth of a new religion,which makes its saviors into victims, the children of Atwar mustcomplete the prophecy of Moonfall. ... Read more

Product Description
Spears illuminates the small and large tragedies in life, drawing the reader close to her subjects with surprising tenderness. ... Read more

Product Description
These lyrical drawings and poems explore the theme ofnewborns in crisis. For the first time, the skill of artist and poethas been put to use in the technological environment of the neonatalintensive care ward. Heather Spears has opened a door hitherto closedto all but some health professionals and parents. In Drawings From theNewborn she discovers a poignant beauty within an otherwise harshreality. Unlike a text on nursing, medical care or the difficulties ofparenting premature babies, this work speaks to all through thelanguage of art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Touching Portraits of Premature Babies
In Drawings from the Newborn, Heather Spears' delicate pencilillustrations bring into our hearts the tiny beings who inhabit the NICU.This collection of portraits of premature babies and sick infants in theCopenhagen NICU is a touching memorial to preemies everywhere. The intimacyof these drawings focus on the individuality of each baby, as the NICUintrudes with a glimpse of a caring hand or oxygen tube. Heather Spears hascaptured the feeling of sitting by the isolette of your baby for hours onend, studying their tiny features as they struggle toward life.

Thedrawings are accompanied by short poems which go straight to the heart.Helen Spears' is an experienced author and poet, and this is demonstratedin the poignancy of her poems about parenting and life and death strugglesthat make up the NICU experience.

The illustrations and poems in Drawingsfrom the Newborn were three years in the making, as Helen Spears traveledby ferry and bicycle to the Copenhagen NICU to draw for 4-5 hours eachnight.

Drawings from the Newborn makes an exceptional gift for familymembers and professionals who would enjoy the images of the NICU throughthe compassionate eyes of an artist. ... Read more

Product Description
In the far future, deadly radiation from atomic conflict has caused humanity to mutate into two-headed or "bi-cephalic" people, who are essentially twins inhabiting one body. In the Moonfall series, readers follow one-headed Tasman and her family, witnessing their development from outcasts to heroes, the only ones able to fit into the ancient spaceships and save the Earth from the threat of the moon_s unstable orbit. The Taming, sequel to Moonfall and The Children of Atwar, concludes the epic saga of humanities strange future. ... Read more

Product Description
Collection of poetry, CBC Literary Prize for Poetry 1991 ... Read more

Product Description
Collection of poetry, Winner of Pat Lowther Award, 1989,Governer General's Award for poetry, 1989. ... Read more