The poems in Dark Water Songs begin on the margins of islands and ancestors, and fan out, probing love, loss and life’s dilemmas. They expand and deepen the poetic exploration which began with her earlier collections, mining the reciprocal spaces enabled by the hyphen between Jamaican and Canadian, exploring silences, the weight of memory, and a sense of the sacred. The collection contributes to the body of work by contemporary Canadian writers of Caribbean origin. The perspective is that of a poet/educator and former nun—a writer who negotiates the world through the lens of islands and continents, landscapes and seas. The book ultimately provides a timely response to society’s angst—acknowledging vulnerability while foregrounding hope.

Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes, is a Jamaican-Canadian, poet/educator and former nun. A Fellow at Scotland's Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers in Fall 2009, her literary publications include the collections: Travelling Light (2006), long-listed for the 2007 ReLit Poetry Award, and The Fires of Naming (2001). Her poetry appears in the anthologies: Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/Canadian Women (2005); Garden Variety, An Anthology of Flower Poems (2007); and Resonance: Poetry and Art (2008), and in journals such as Quills, The Toronto Quarterly, Arc, and Lichen. She has lived in Toronto since her arrival in 1969.

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