My island’s the house I sleep in at night

by Laurie Brinklow

Cover image by Adam Young (ayoungstudios.com)

“Being an islander means that you aren’t like everyone else.” Bounded by water, you can live your life with certainty knowing where your edges are. Drawn from interviews with artists from Newfoundland and Tasmania, these poems capture what it means to be an islander. To know every rock and tickle, “the sea your road/the hole in the sky/your light to travel by.” In My island’s the house I sleep in at night, Brinklow weaves stories and images with her own poetic imaginings. These are poems steeped in community memory, about belonging to a place like nowhere else, a kitchen party full of islanders telling stories about the patch of rock they call home.


April 2021
78 pages, 6×9, paperback, $18.95
ISBN 978-1-988692-45-6
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Laurie Brinklow, Mike Needham photo

Dr. Laurie Brinklow teaches in the Master of Arts in Island Studies program at the University of Prince Edward Island. She is particularly interested in the power of place and story, and their impact on island identity. She is the author of Here for the Music (Acorn 2012).

Listen to her interview with Matt Rainnie of CBC Mainstreet here.

Joan Sullivan reviews My island’s the house I sleep in at night in The Telegram.

Read about her inspiration for the book on CBC news: How Island Studies research became a book of poetry for UPEI prof.