Molly Peacock is a poet, biographer, essayist, and writer of tales whose multi-genre literary life has taken her from New York City to Toronto, from poetry to prose and back again to poetry, from words to words-and-pictures, and from lyric self-examination to curiosity about the lives of others.
Image from The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72.
Others Like Me: A Toronto Reading April 23 7pm at Another Story Bookshop
What happens when an exchange of tweets morphs into a richly layered writers' relationship about the choice to not have children? Nicole Louie, in the midst of interviewing women without children around the world, reached out to Molly Peacock, who had written about her choice a quarter century before. A unique relationship evolved as the South American Nicole and the North American Molly began to correspond. Nicole asked Molly to mentor her through a process that resulted in Others Like Me. Molly, inspired by the reproductive rights issues in the next generation, said yes. During their Zoom conversations, Molly's husband was ill and eventually passed away. She began the poems in The Widow's Crayon Box, a book about a passionate marriage that began with an agreement to not have children.
On different sides of the Atlantic, Nicole and Molly have made a tapestry of writing inspired by their own journeys as women who won’t become mothers. They now meet in person at Another Story Bookshop to tell readers all about it, guided by insights from Nandita Bajaj, the producer and host of the podcast Beyond Pronatalism, who will moderate the discussion.
Join us for a program of friendship, generational decisions, reproductive choices, marriages without children, poetry and prose at Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Ave. Toronto
In the Spotlight
The Widow’s Crayon Box
A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation.
After her husband’s death, Molly Peacock realized she was not living the received idea of a widow’s mauve existence but instead was experiencing life in all colors. These gorgeous poems―joyful, furious, mournful, bewildered, sexy, devastated, whimsical and above all, moving―composed in sonnet sequences and in open forms, designed in four movements (After, Before, When, and Afterglow)―illuminate both the role of the caregiver and the crystalline emotions one can experience after the death of a cherished partner. With her characteristic virtuosity, her fearless willingness to confront even the most difficult emotions, and always with buoyancy and zest, Peacock charts widowhood in the twenty-first century.
In the Spotlight
A Friend Sails in on a Poem
Two women begin a friendship in poetry, never anticipating it would last half a century…
For the last forty-six years, the distinguished poets Molly Peacock and Phillis Levin have read and discussed nearly every poem they’ve written—an unparalleled friendship in poetry. Here Peacock traces the development of their ideas about poetry across their lifelong back-and-forth, quoting their poems, investigating their childhoods, personalities, writing habits, reading habits, and startling differences. She speculates about their challenges as they meet across seminar tables, kitchen tables, coffee, tea and restaurant tables from their twenties through their sixties and seventies. A Friend Sails in on a Poem offers a charming, psychologically wise, and metaphorically piquant look at navigating craft, creativity, and companionship. This is a book both for serious poets as well as for anyone who wants a deep dive into the impact of friendship on art itself.
Flower Diary: Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door
In Flower Diary: Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door, the companion biography, Peacock looks at the balancing act of female creativity and domesticity in the life of Mary Hiester Reid, a painter who produced over three hundred stunning, emotive floral still lifes and landscapes. A winner of an Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Biography and named one of Quill & Quire’s Best Books of 2021.
“Peacock has many talents, not the least of which is her voice, characterized by engaging honesty and self-deprecating humor. She comes across as that fellow passenger on an airplane to whom you have suddenly and quite naturally confessed your story (and learned hers).”
– Lorna Blake, The Hudson Review
Image from Flower Diary / Mary Hiester Reid, Chrysanthemums, A Japanese Arrangement, Art Gallery of Ontario.
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Image: Flower Diary/Mary Hiester Reid, Roses in a Vase, Courtesy Jeffrey Cooley Gallery, Lyme, CT