The poems in Heaven Cake are at once familial and global, homilies told by a grandmother to the younger generation gathered around her. Linda Rogers has collected people she knows and people she knows about, finding them in poems that turn upon change and life transitions. This is a very rich written tapestry from one of Canada's foremost poets.

She is breaking her first
egg on the side of the metal bowl.
It sounds like bedpans and nurses,
the girl who sat with Grandpa last night
holding his bruised hand in her own
until his old heart
stopped singing in hers.

Nominated for a 1998-99 Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. The award is given annually to the author of a work sustaining the tradition of a people's literature in Canada.

These poems substantiate Rogers' well-deserved popularity. She is one of our finest poets: imaginative, fearless, entertaining, and intelligent.—CHARLES LILLARD

Poetry, 86 pp, 6 × 9
ISBN 1-55039-072-4, paper, $13.95