Yvonne Blomer, "Death of Persephone: A Murder" (Caitlin Press, 2024)

Summary

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New Books Network: Yvonne Blomer, "Death of Persephone: A Murder" (Caitlin Press, 2024)

Date: November 27, 2025
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Yvonne Blomer

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Episode Overview

In this thoughtful and layered episode, host Holly Gattery interviews acclaimed poet Yvonne Blomer about her latest work, Death of Persephone: A Murder, published by Caitlin Press in 2024. The conversation dives into Blomer’s feminist retelling of the Persephone myth, blending poetry, play, and murder mystery into a form-defying collection. The discussion explores mythology’s lasting imprint on contemporary gender violence, the blending of narrative forms, the expression of female rage, and the power of voice and playfulness in even the darkest of art.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Inspirations of the Book

• Mythology as Framework: Blomer, with a background in anthropology, is drawn to how mythologies explain the world—and how those old frameworks fail to serve us today.
  • “How mythology came into being to help us understand the world we're living in and how it's now no longer doing that.” (06:03, Yvonne)
• Setting and Concept: The inspiration to transpose Persephone’s story into Montreal’s underground metro system was sparked by a visit years ago.
  • Climate change, environmental concerns, and feminism converge as major themes.

2. Form and Structure: Poetry, Play, and Mystery

• Blomer’s book defies easy categorization: part poetry collection, part play, part script, organically combining diverse forms into a coherent whole.
  • Grounding the Reader: She created a dramatis personae to orient readers to the dual mythological and murder-mystery worlds.
    • “I wanted to make it clear right from the start that you will have these mythological... [and] rewrite... murder mystery... characters.” (07:33, Yvonne)

3. Faithful Subversion: Honoring and Retooling Myth

• Holding Archetypes, Changing Fates: Blomer retains mythic archetypes but offers flexibility, notably making Persephone younger and releasing her from hypersexualization, while holding Hades accountable for abduction.
  • “I released Persephone from being a hypersexualized queen of the underworld. I held Hades accountable for kidnapping a young girl.” (09:30, Yvonne)
• The project subverts old lessons with contemporary critique, centering female perspective rather than reinforcing patriarchal interpretations.

4. The Ever-present Threat: Lived Experience and Representation

• The narrative adeptly captures the constant, ambient threat to women’s safety, both mythically and in modern life.
  • The blend of personal experience with fictionalized character (Stephanie as Persephone) brings authenticity.
  • “As a mother of two young girls, even just seeing the way grown men look at them... it's beyond unsettling. It actually enrages me.” (15:05, Holly)
• Blomer shares that some poems channel personal episodes of being followed, grounding the poetry in real-world fears.

5. Naming and Power Dynamics: “Uncle H”

• Persephone refers to Hades as “Uncle H,” emphasizing the disturbing family dynamics in the myth and its relevance to cycles of abuse.
  • “In this myth, Persephone is... daughter of Zeus... her uncle and he kidnaps and rapes her. So there is that in the myth. And so I wanted to carry that forward and keep acknowledging the family relationships.” (15:42, Yvonne)

6. Reading: “Landscape of Dream” (16:12)

[Poem Excerpt Read by Yvonne at 16:12]

• A haunting, dreamlike portrayal of Stephanie/Persephone watched by “Uncle H,” suffused with threat. Holly describes it as a “nightmare lullaby”:
  • “These stories that we're told as children that are supposed to bring us comfort, but actually push us outside of ourselves and our bodies and make us feel scared and afraid and alone...” (18:00, Holly)

7. Blending Voices and Genre: Integrating Mystery and Myth

• Detective “di Bocca”: Blomer wanted a murder mystery framework and a hard-boiled detective character, providing “male characters who were not misogynist.”
  • She read extensively about novel structure to interweave the parallel arcs of Stephanie and the detective.
• Case Notes: 36 linked sonnets structure the detective’s investigation, providing a modern procedural counterpoint to the myth’s ancient violence.

8. Reading: “Case Notes di Bocca 22–23” (22:27)

[Poetry Segment Read by Yvonne at 22:27]

• Blomer weaves mythological symbolism (flowers, serpents) with the language of modern crime and pathology, infusing the ancient with urgent relevance:
  • “Sam like he branded her. Boca like Czech child sex slaves were. But no marks of sexual assault... Some male group of maybe incels — Hades: irascible men who think they can do whatever.” (24:24, Yvonne)

9. Rage and Power: The Force of Female Anger

• Holly praises the way female rage in Blomer’s poems is “polished,” focused, and powerful, rather than devalued as senseless or “shrill.”
  • “I feel like female rage... sharpens me and it empowers me because my rage isn’t set to be violent... And in your book, I felt like there was a lot of rage, but... it was so polished.” (26:28, Holly)
• Blomer reflects:
  • “When we deepen into [our intelligence] and are clear minded, I hope that we are clear spoken... Sometimes your voice shakes or you tear up because you're so enraged and so fed up. And I think there's power there too.” (28:07, Yvonne)
  • The idea that rage, “buried and under pressure,” becomes “diamond clear” (28:58, Holly).

10. The Role of Play and Humor

• Despite dark materials, playfulness and humor—especially from Stephanie/Persephone’s resilient character and the creative use of graffiti slang—provide both relief and edge.
  • “I had so much fun with like puns... I really dug into the language, the myth, those—That serpent and paper white thing is everywhere throughout the book and it's part of Hades and Persephone’s original myth.” (25:31, Yvonne)

11. The Inevitability of Fate

• On why she doesn’t spare Stephanie/Persephone:
  • “Ultimately, she's trapped in the myth... to really see what Hades had done, she needed to die... It was as if that part of it I couldn’t quite get free of.” (34:34, Yvonne)
• Holly agrees, noting the “authentic, depressingly authentic” truth:
  • “That's what happens to girls and women. And you can hope a thousand times that it doesn't. But... it's happening all the time.” (35:56, Holly)

12. Looking Ahead: Future Projects

• Blomer shares she is working on poems about clothing, feminism, and the environmental toll of fast fashion—linking shifts in women's lives with changing fabrics, from plant-based to petroleum-derived.
  • “It sounds really huge, but that's what I’m working on.” (36:22, Yvonne)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mythology’s Relevance:
  • “If we're using these myths to understand the world we live in, we need to change the myths so that we can better be better, I guess.” (12:23, Yvonne)
• On Naming Hades:
  • “I called [him] Uncle H instead of Hades, partly because she was little and he would have told her to call him that, but also there's this family dynamic.” (15:42, Yvonne)
• On Female Rage:
  • “If you put your weight on your heels and let your voice deepen into your core self... there’s power there.” (30:11, Yvonne)
• On Play:
  • “...Even with so dark a book, but I really did. I really like dug into the language, the myth, those. That serpent and paper white thing is everywhere throughout the book.” (25:31, Yvonne)
• On Fate:
  • “In order to really see what Hades had done, she needed to die... it was as if that part of it I couldn’t quite get free of.” (34:34, Yvonne)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:02 – Introduction, Yvonne’s background
• 05:31 – Origin story of the book
• 07:33 – Dramatis personae, genre blending
• 09:30 – On balancing respect for and subversion of myth
• 13:00 – Representation and lived female experience
• 15:42 – Why call Hades “Uncle H” and its family implications
• 16:12 – Reading: “Landscape of Dream”
• 18:58 – Detective and mystery framework
• 22:27 – Reading: “Case Notes di Bocca” (22 & 23)
• 26:28 – Discussion: Polished rage and its importance
• 30:11 – The power of deep, core-rooted voice and emotion
• 32:23 – Using play and humor in a dark narrative
• 34:34 – Why Stephanie/Persephone must die
• 36:22 – Next project: Poetry on clothing and environmental feminism

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Episode Style & Tone

The conversation is candid, intelligent, sometimes raw in its emotion, but often playful despite the heaviness of the subject. Both host and guest speak with urgency—uncovering uncomfortable truths, celebrating rage as clarity, and championing the importance of reinventing myth to reflect women’s lived realities.

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For listeners seeking a powerful, poetic, and thoroughly modern retelling of an ancient myth, with all the complexities of rage, resilience, danger, humor, and voice, this episode is essential.

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Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I am your host Holly Gattery and I am joined today by the wonderful Yvonne Blomer who is the author of many books. But the one we are here to talk about is Death of Persephone A murder. I love what Ariel Gordon had to say about this book so I am going to read her back cover blurb and just a little shout out to Ariel. I also did an interview with her. Here you can listen to In Depth of Persephone. Blomer stalks back alleys asking urgent questions. Why is the violence against women and girls and myths still haunting us today. Blomer is a poet at the height of her powers, her stanzas blooming with paper, whites blazing with graffiti. And so the reader gets to be the grieving mother, the doomed daughter and the hell bent detective as Blomer walks us out of the old story and into this essential retelling. Welcome to the show, Yvonne.

[C]

Thanks so much, Holly.

[B]

It's so lovely to have you.

[C]

It's so great to be here.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

This has been a long time coming. I was like, I want to interview you. And then it took like a year, but here we are and, you know, better late than never, especially for this really fascinating book, which is, yes, poetry, but also something else. And I'm going to ask you about that. But first for our listeners, I'll tell you a little bit more about Yvonne. Yvonne Glowmirror's first book, A Broken Mirror, Fallen Leaf, was shortlisted for the Gerard Lampert Memorial Award. And her poems have won and been shortlisted for many awards in Canada and the UK since An excerpt of Death of Persephone won the Gwendolyn McEwen Poetry Prize in the 2021. In 2021 with Exile Editions, the Last show on Earth. Her fourth book of poems came out with Caitlin Press in 2022, and in the fall of 2022, Pamelpts Press released the Book of Places 10th anniversary edition. Yvonne's other poetry books include as if a Raven, which is also with Pamelpsis, and the anthology's Hologram Homage to PK Page. And there is so much other beautiful work. Yvonne lives in Victoria, bc. Oh, she's a past poet laureate of Victoria, BC too, which I know, I know. And I actually have a question about that. So I don't know why I'm acting so surprised. And the director of the weekly readings that series Planet Earth Poetry, Yvonne, do you still do Planet Earth Poetry?

[C]

No. No. When I became the poet laureate, I stepped out of running Planet Earth Poetry. I didn't want to do both.

[B]

That is fair enough. I just had to ask that because I'm like, I'm saying this, but I think I may be reading from an outdated bio. So I wanted to correct and clarify writing.

[C]

Yeah. Kieran Regear is our current poet laureate and the artistic director of Planet Earth Poetry. So she is managing to do.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's so much work and being a poet in Canada and all the community work it involves speaking just about Canada because I don't pretend to know anywhere else, but it's a ton of community work in addition to the actual Artistic work of writing poetry. So, yeah. Yvonne, I wanted to ask you first where this book came from. What sprouted this particularly fascinating seed in your brain?

[A]

Mm.

[C]

Well, I think I'm very interested in mythology and how we. I have a degree in anthropology, so perhaps it comes from there, but how mythology came into being to help us understand the world we're living in and how it's now no longer doing that. And I. And so I had that going on in my mind, and I visited Montreal a long, long time ago.

[B]

Found.

[C]

The metro system there so fascinating because it's a whole underground city. And so had this idea when I was there, oh, wouldn't it be cool to rewrite the Persephone myth and set it in Montreal with the underground being the metro system? And so that's what I slowly started to do. And I often am writing about climate change and environmental degradation, as well as feminist approaches to writing things. So I think those two things came together.

[B]

I'd also like to talk about the opening of this. I'm gonna say collection, but, I mean, it is a poetry collection, but it's also a play, it's also a script. It's a lot of things that are organically whole and don't contradict each other. But we start with kind of you setting the scene and you, the poet, the author, setting the scene and giving us a rundown of who's who and what's going on. And I was wondering about your choice to give the readers that grounding. And I say that because as a writer, I am constantly told I need to ground years more. I'm like, is this something you were like, I need to do this? Or was this an editor who said, maybe you should do this?

[C]

It's interesting. I can't remember, but I think I did it. And the editor and I tweaked it, and the editor was Tanis MacDonald. Lucky me. And so, yeah, I created this dramatis personae. I wanted to make it clear that right from the start that you will have these mythological creatures or people characters. But there's also characters from the rewrite from the murder mystery that I've also written. So I guess I wanted to set that up to prepare the reader for what they're entering.

[B]

Yeah, I. I really liked it. And I was like, oh, well, thank you. He's on. But very helpful of you. Yeah. And I mean, it's just. It's. It's a. It's a page. I mean, when I say a page, it's a page, but half of it's a list. So it's not like it's a lot. It's not this cumbersome introduction or anything. It's, it's quite, it's quite interesting. So I thought I wanted to ask you about the poem Misogyny, which is on page 15 for those following along at home. But it's starts with this meme, has no dictionary clarity, it's no Bible. And when I, when I started that, when I read that, I was like, wow, we are really mashing up old and old literature and new literature, new literature, new content. We think about a meme. And throughout the book, it's this really beautiful blending and even subversion of expectations of myth, of roles in myth. And I was wondering if you could tell me about your approach to that and specifically if you could tell me about if you felt like you needed to honor anything about the original myth or if you thought, know what? It's all fair game.

[C]

Ah, it's such a good question. So I did honor the original myth. And I, I, I built a whole world that has all the elements of the myth, animals and plants that are connected to Hades or Persephone, or throughout the book, particular behaviors of those characters are held within the book. I released Persephone from being a hypersexualized queen of the underworld. I held Hades accountable for kidnapping a young girl. And that would depend on how you read the myth. So in the original myth or in the translations that I've read, she is a young maiden picking flowers to braid daisy chains. And so maiden could be any age, really. It's still a girl. And I made her a little younger. So she, in Death of Persephone, is 7 when Hades takes her. But I, the character, like often mythological characters, are kind of archetypes. So I tried to hold to those archetypes what is their kind of large, abstract, fundamental thing about them. And I tried to hold true to that and perhaps was most flexible with Persephone. Did I answer all the questions there?

[B]

You did. Thank you so much for that. And I mean, I, I have a tendency when I go into anything to do with mythology, and I don't pretend to be any great scholar of mythology. In fact, often when I see a poem or anything that's playing on mythology, I tune out entirely just because I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it. But then I heard about yours and how you were rewriting it, and then I heard you read from it a bit. I'm like, I'm so sold on this. Yes, yes. And I Think. I think it's like. I don't like anything that reinforces the original or celebrates the original, which sounds a little bit strange, but I don't necessarily have a problem with it, but I think it just goes. I don't have a problem with it being what it is in the time it was written and being studied for what it. For what it represented or the time it's been retold and retold and retooled again, like. But I think it's because it's always the same people retelling it who are reinforcing the same lessons and the same massages and the same bs. So I'm just like. I'm tired of hearing old white men pass about these.

[C]

And I think in the last, I don't know, 10 or more years, there's been more and more retelling of these myths by women from a more female perspective. Because the women are. I think they're strong characters, but they're women presented to us from a patriarchal mindset. And it's. Yeah, it's brutal and boring and awful. I mean, not boring, but. Yeah. If we're using these myths to understand the world we live in, we need to change the myths so that we can better be better, I guess.

[B]

Lofty. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's, you know, representation matters. And the reason that I, you know, kind of tune out of traditional tellings of the myths is I don't see any representation of me in it. I'm not a meek, subservient woman. I certainly don't feel like I represent standard notions of beauty. So I was always just like, eh, you know, I'm not really here for this, but I really did love your book specifically. And one of the poems that I was really wanting to talk about, and even if you could read it, it's on page 86. It's called Landscape of Dream. And we have Uncle H. Who. Oh, I mean, it's Hades. But I'd love for you to explain why you chose the uncle moniker. And I love how there is this constant shadow threat. There's this feeling of constant threat to women throughout the book. And it's not. It's not explained over. It's not. While this is just the way it is, it is acknowledged and it is everywhere. And it felt very true to how I experience the world. The way that I walk through the world, you know, my. My partner walks through it a completely different way. And sometimes I have to explain to him why I don't want to do something he wants to do because it makes me feel unsafe. And it's like completely news to the guy. And this book felt like nothing I could say to the poet would be news in that it was. It was fully realized within the work.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And some of the poems in here of Stephanie, who is my Persephone in the modern world, happened to me. I was followed. So, you know, it's not as if I had to go far to come to these feelings. And of course, she's the main character in the book, so the eye is constantly on her. And these male. These male characters are constantly watching her. And it. Yeah, it is uncomfortable and it is true.

[B]

I think it is. It is. There's always the lingering threat. And as a mother of two young girls, even just seeing the way that grown men look at them, follow them throughout their grocery store, their eyes, it's incredibly. Oh, it's just. It's beyond unsettling. It actually enrages me. It makes me angry.

[C]

Yeah, totally. And that's Persep. That's coming from the myth of Persephone, that notion of.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But would you read to us? Landscape of living? Yeah, I'll just say I called Uncle.

[C]

H Uncle H instead of Hades, partly because she was little and he would have told her to call him that, but also there's this family dynamic. In this myth, Persephone is the daughter of Zeus. Zeus is also her uncle. Hades is her uncle and he kidnaps and rapes her. So there is that in the myth. And so I wanted to carry that forward and keep acknowledging the family relationships.

[B]

In the in there.

[C]

So landscape of dream. Uncle H stands over her while she sleeps and dreams scent of paper white narcissus voices rise other girls outside and laughing. They run through sprinklers, jump while she sleeps and dreams swings, spin and spin until she joins them in this sleeping dream. Shape of paper whites graffitied, her skin pale and girls bleeding. Girls bleeding makes Uncle H walk away. He leaves them be. But somewhere under a picnic table in the shadow of a tree, a girl just like her crumpled. Not dreaming, not sleeping.

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Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Yeah, it reads. I mean, you reading it and I'm reading it to myself felt like a nightmare lullaby. Like these stories that we're told as children that are supposed to bring us comfort, but actually push us outside of ourselves and our bodies and make us feel scared and afraid and alone and. Yeah, I really felt that. And thank you for reading it.

[C]

Oh yeah, yeah. There's this. So there's a backstory here that Uncle H has committed a few crimes. One when he was quite young and others when Stephanie was quite young. And there's a memory thing going on in the book that when she's in the underworld, she doesn't remember where she came from, but when she escapes it, then those memories start to come back and she can no longer remember the underworld. So that kind of buys into the myth as well.

[B]

Well, let's talk about the other part. We have myth and then we have mystery. And arguably a lot of myth is a mystery. But anyways, we're not gonna, we're not gonna go down that road and it's gonna start circling the drain if I do. I was wondering if you could talk about it if you have, you know, there section on 108 called case notes. And I wanted you to talk about incorporating, incorporating this kind of detective as hardboiled detective feel throughout it too, which was delightfully unexpected.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So I, I wanted to write it as a murder mystery. I wanted it set in a modern city. This detective is a little bit hopeless. There's these ongoing crimes and the city is a character. The city and the underground are both characters as well. And you know, he's got to kind of pull up his socks and get to work. And I wanted him to echo that kind of hard boiled detective. And also I wanted some male characters in the book who were not misogynist. So I wanted a couple of characters who were doing something to try and help, even if they were flawed themselves. Yeah. And.

[B]

Yeah, well, I want to talk about, just from a, like a craft standpoint about blending really beautifully the. The voice. The voices and what I mean by that is, you know, you think, at least I do. I think of mythology and I think of a certain voice, a certain feel. And then when I think about, like, Dashiell Hamet, I. Something completely different. Yet in this, it seems blended. So stylistically, how did you go about this? Is this something that Tanis, your editor, and you worked on or a lot? Is this something that you had to polish a ton, or is it something that came to, let's say, almost fully formed?

[C]

I, I knew, I think, from the beginning. The detective has been there from the beginning. I, I had. He had a whole backstory I had to drop. I, I, I. The other thread, when I started writing, it was a kind of re. A re an investigation of murder crime shows. So I had. I, I was really looking at these detective shows and why are women always the victims? And all these female bodies sprawled everywhere. So I had that going on in my mind and I was linking it to Persephone, really. I had to learn how to. I had to read books on novel structures in order to figure out where the detective would fit. And so the two stories kind of run parallel to each other. While she's growing up, he's working. When she leaves the underground to go to university and things, he's already investigating these murders of women. And so their stories kind of run alongside each other. And then he takes over, because I'm not giving anything away in saying this, it's in the title, but because she's killed, he takes over.

[B]

I was wondering if you'd read us maybe one of the case notes. So, you know, on page 124 and 125, there's relatively shorter ones if you wanted to not be tied down.

[C]

Yeah, sure. I mean, they're all sonnets. It's a sonnet series, 36 linked sonnets. But, yeah, I can read. So by the time we get to 124, 125, we're kind of deep into the book. And the detective, I think, has taken over, hasn't he? Yeah, yeah. And so when Sonnet, when Case Note 22 begins, it picks up from where 21 ended. So the last line of the previous one is the beginning of the next one. And Boca, Detective Boca has really started to do his job much better than he was at the beginning. Case notes di Boca, number 22 of 36. Hades the snake. Steph the paperwhites. Boca spreads pics across his desk. Facts from Greece, snake toed in sand, flowers thrown over and again graffitied by whom and what story told. He slides his old files open, ponders his cousin's words. Could be the same symbol with multiple perps. Nan's club or group egging each other on like boys. Cat calling their teeth. Leering, tracing, killing. He needs to sharpen his teeth. But heads to the lab where Sam has something she wants him to see. Look at the back. Her neck in faded ink. A five flowered white narcissus at its base, toothy serpent. Case notes di bocca number 23. The pathologist eyes bokeh serpent and flowers again. Weird how they keep showing up but on her neck. And it's old. As if done when she was a child. Boca adds, it's got to be Hades. Bokeh lines up the facts. Greek girl killed and the flower and snake appear. Then at some time she's taken, kept and tattooed. Sam like he branded her. Boca like Czech child sex slaves were. But no marks of sexual assault. Not prolonged, she says. Boca arches a brow and looks again. Someone has picked this, selected this symbol. Some male group of maybe incels Hades. Irascible men who think they can do whatever.

[B]

Thank you so much for that. I just love all the very contemporary, salient, timely words. Then they're like incels. And then there's a poem on page 141 called the Geek of Graffiti in the Manosphere. I mean, that's so much fun.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I had so much fun with like puns and that poem, particularly the Geek of Graffiti. I used so much graffiti slang and I mean to say I had so much fun with so dark a book, but I really did. I really like dug into the language, the myth, those. That serpent and paper white thing is everywhere throughout the book and it's part of Hades and Persephone original myth. And yeah, yeah, thanks. And yeah, I mean, I started this book a long, long, long time ago. So Harvey Weinstein comes up in it. But look where we are today with the President of the United States. Like, it's just so appalling. And I'm. Yeah. A friend recently heard me read one of the City poems and he was like, I just feel the rage in that poem. I was like, yes.

[B]

Yeah. Well, that's perfectly leading into one of my final questions for you. And that's talking about women's rage and how it. It's unleashed in this book. But I want to say, like, people always think of as rage or, you know, women can have their rage held against them as. It's as if it's something that makes us nonsensical and something that devalues us. Cause we're just angry women. But I feel like female rage. Maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience or trying to justify my own rage, but I feel like it actually sharpens me and it makes me clearer and it makes me, it empowers me because my rage isn't set to be violent. It is not set to hurt anybody. It is a kind of a vigilante feeling of rage. And in your, in your book, I felt like there was a lot of rage, but I felt like it was so polished. If, like, if, like, if you think of like a brass newel post or something, you know, if you took that out and hit somebody with it, it would hurt. But you're not, it's just something that you can, you can see yourself reflected in. Gosh, I'm really beating this metaphor to death speaking which. But it's really, really beautifully polished. And it's, it's powerful and it's, it's not this kind of unwieldy, nonsensical thing that anyone could in my opinion, possibly devalue or reduce to the mad ramblings of somebody. And I want to talk about giving space and giving voice to this rage, but doing so in a way that is so wonderfully sharp.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think women are incredibly intelligent and our intelligence runs. Intelligence runs deep. And when we deepen into it and are clear minded, I hope that we are clear spoken. And this is my, you know, this is my craft. And so I dug into it and I think, yeah, the rage. Sometimes your voice shakes, right? Or you tear up because you're so enraged and so fed up. And I think there's power there too. And we don't have to make ourselves other or male to express ourselves. We can, we are very good at expressing ourselves and we can just dig deep into who we are. That's.

[B]

Yeah, I love your use of the word deep because it automatically clarified something I've been feeling and thinking it's like something buried and under pressure. The rage being buried and under pressure and instead of it, you know, crushing it, it turns it into something that's really diamond clear. And I think like as a woman, whenever I get angry, I always, I'm. The thought of expressing that anger in its raw, unwieldy form doesn't cross my mind because that leaves me open for attack. Be showing that I felt like I'd be too vulnerable. So I'm more likely to sit with my rage and let it be pressurized and, and kind of, you know, clarified. And I I don't. I can't think of one time at least, you know, in my adult life. I'm sure there is one, but I can't think of one where I've actually just lashed out in rage. If I'm expressing rage, it's usually something that's been in, like, internalized for a while first. And I felt that in your book. Like, I felt this very intentional rage, if there is such a thing.

[C]

Well, we're put down if we're shrill.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And we do happen to have higher voices, so. And often when you're upset, your voice goes up and then you get all that backlash, which is just, you know, enraging, frankly. But if you kind of. If you put your weight on your heels and let your voice deepen into your core self, I think. I don't know, there's. Feels like there's power there somehow. I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying. But it feels powerful to go. Yeah. To go deep into. Yeah. To embody it in a way that gives it more force or. I don't know. I don't know, clarity. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, I love it. No, I'm here for it. And I agree with what you say about, you know, being ridiculous, being ridiculed when we're shrill. Like, it, It. It takes away the power of what we're legitimately angry about. Even my. My cat has left. Taken to leaving. This does have a point to everyone, I promise, has taken to leaving shrews, like she's killing shrews and leaving them on our doormat. And I didn't even know we had shrews around us, but it got me taught thinking about the term shrew and the way. Way that true has been traditionally used against women. And I'm looking at this adorable, dead little rodent cleaning it up and thinking about, you know, your book and, you know, being called these names and just every. And how these names do not represent anything about what we're actually doing or who we actually are. But this weaponizing. And your book is really just such a gorgeous and deep and at times kind of funny. Like, I wasn't funny. I mean, like, you can see the play in the book. You can see again, as you said, it maybe sounds strange to say it's like parts of it are fun, but parts of it are fun. And I wanted you to talk about using play in your book and the way you, you know, playing with language. Yes, but also there's a lightness to the language. Even though it's dealing with such difficult, dark things. And I'd love to hear you talk about that, about play and lightness in such a dark context.

[C]

Yeah, I think it's coming mostly from Stephanie Persephone. And I think she has. She is this.

[B]

Like.

[C]

She's one of those, I don't know, you know, authors who write novels, which I know you do, always talk about how the characters come alive to them. And right from the first few poems, she became like a real person to me in many, many ways. And I know in my writing group back then, they were like, oh, my God, she's going to die.

[B]

And she's so great. Right.

[C]

And I think part of it is she's got this resilience that is quite incredible. And she has a little bit of attitude that she throws at Uncle H. And I think I tried to allow her to be, rather than just shut down and traumatized, to have this power within her, to keep going. And she's a little bit humorous. After she's dead, she becomes the shade of Persephone. And, you know, this poem where she's kind of trying to freak out the person doing the autopsy on her. And earlier on, when she's still a kid, she gets really pissed off that she's not allowed to do any heavy lifting. And all those things are things that women are dealing with all the time, this kind of judgment towards us. And sometimes having a bit of sense of humor about it or being pithy can help. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, I agree. So I have a penultimate question here, and that is, you know, you're retelling this story of Persephone. You're retelling so much. You're adding so much new life into it and changing some things, but, of course, as we said, not changing others. So for people who have not read the book, if I had not read this book, and I have my theory about this, but I would love you to tell our audience about why, in your decision to retell the book, did you not decide to retell her fate? Why not have Persephone live or Stephanie live?

[C]

I think because in. Ultimately, she's trapped in the myth. And she is also, throughout the book, kind of every woman. And in order to really see what Hades had done, she needed to die. So, yeah, I think that's. It felt like something I couldn't not do. And I tried hard to not reenact violence. And then Tanis and I were like, you're gonna have to write the poem where she's killed.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So it was as if that part of it I couldn't quite get free of.

[B]

I mean, I felt that it was the only option. So I'm asking for people who have not read it. It made perfect sense within the context of the story. So when you read it, people. I know, it's a poem, it's also a story, it's also a play, it's also every. It's an allegory, it's everything. I really felt like it made perfect sense. And I mean, to me it was. It makes perfect sense because that's what happens to girls and women. And you can hope a thousand times that it doesn't. But turn on the radio, listen to the news.

[C]

It's.

[B]

It's happening all the time. So I mean, it. It felt like the. The most authentic, depressingly authentic thing you could possibly do. But I wanted to ask anyway because I understand not everyone has been immersed in the book as I have to understand why I thought you made this decision. So thank you so much for answering that. My final question for you is about what you're working on now.

[C]

Oh, so now I am again staying between climate and creatures and women and feminism and working on poems about clothing and how women's lives, changes in women's lives reflected changes in clothing, like being able to work during the wars. Suddenly women in European countries were able to wear trousers for the first time. But also looking at how through over time and the introduction of non plant based materials, we've led us towards, you know, petroleum based clothing and massive, massive landfills of fast fashion. So it sounds really huge, but that's what I'm working on.

[B]

Oh, there's so much there that I love that I don't love that it exists. I love that you're bringing it out and you're talking about it. I mean, yeah, just getting me started on fast fashion. Okay, yeah, we won't do that right now, but I love, and I. I love that you're writing about it and I can't wait to read it. So, Yvonne, thank you so much for joining me today on nbn. Everyone, you can pick up Death of Persephone, A Murder, wherever books are bought or borrowed. And it has been published by Caitlin Press, which is a wonderful press in Canada. Yvonne, thank you again.

[C]

Thanks so much, Holly. Foreign.

[B]

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