Stone Boat

Kristen Wittman's debut poetry collection takes the form of a prairie autobiography, painting a vivid portrait of Franklin, a boy who becomes a farmer, and then an old man forced to watch helplessly as all around him falls to ruin.

Following Franklin from his early years full of wonder, and living on a sea of land, through an adolescence full of family responsibility but plagued by death, drought and betrayal, to his twilight as a man who has lost all to the modern world, Wittman's stark verse is often lyrical, and just as often brutal, but always intensely evocative of the way of life that Western Canada was built on—a way of life absent of modern convenience and filled with hardship. It is a way of life steeped in blood and environmental danger, but where one's own convictions can be as dangerous and debilitating as the innocuous mustard seed that ravages Franklin’s lungs at a young age.

Stone Boat reveals this life from behind Franklin's eyes, giving us first hand access to Franklin's thoughts, desires and despair as he watches all around him fall away, leaving behind only the loneliness, stubbornness and regret that he carries with him to his last burning breath.