sewn paper
FICTION / Short Stories
   (single author)
March 2007
144 pages
ISBN 0-88984-287-6
EAN 978-0-88984-287-8
$18.95

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Up on the Roof

P K Page

The nature of truth in art, and most particularly in fiction, is reconsidered in the guile of a conspiratorial domestic with attitude, fallen arches and an aversion to household appliances which complements perfectly her inability to consider orthotics or the ministrations of a podiatrist.


`A flashlight, a frying pan, a library, a piece of marble -- you will encounter all these objects in the worlds P. K. Page invents for you in these pages. It's hard to imagine so many authorial impersonations in one book: a middle-aged gardener retreats from domestic chaos to the privacy of his rooftop shelter; a young man discovers his parents' library as solace for a broken heart; a child whose parents are pigeon breeders makes beautiful objects of feathers. All the stories have in common the impeccable verbal magic that is P. K. Page's unique poetic signature. And beneath is a profound meditation. What is fiction, what is fact? Is there anything we can call truth? And who is the tremulous `we', desperately trying to fix a location in this multiple, endlessly metamorphic, lonely cosmos. With an understanding earned by a lifetime of attention, Page assures us that this cosmos is threaded with love, if we are brave enough to search for it.'


Where do my stories come from? First, from a voice. In `Ex Libris' I was given the voice of Ivor and from there on it was plain sailing. Is that true? Not completely, I suppose, because every time I had to stop -- to get a meal, to go out -- I couldn't help wondering if the voice would be there when I began again. I was not Daedalus. There was no thread in my head to lead me on. Only the voice. The same is true of `Up on the Roof'. Once I had the voice, I had the story. Only that voice knew that story, so if I lost the voice I lost it all. The same can roughly be said of all the others. The reason I hedge a bit here is because sometimes another element is there too: a vestige of plot or colour. But only a vestige. Very thin ice that would not bear my weight.

I began writing stories in my twenties. They were usually bizarre: the man whose leg came through the ceiling, the child who fell from a steeple, etc. Then I stopped for some years. When I began again the stories were still bizarre. What has become clear to me is that the closer the stories come to autobiography, the more impossible they are to write. I write out of the imagination. Facts clip my wings. And without a voice, I have no voice. I am mute.

 

Photo by Marilyn Bowering

 P. K. Page has written some of the best poems published in Canada over the last five decades. In addition to winning the Governor General's award for poetry in 1957, she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1999. In 2002, her book, Planet Earth, was short listed for coveted Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the author of more than a dozen books, including ten volumes of poetry, a novel, selected short stories, three books for children, and a memoir, entitled Brazilian Journal, based on her extended stay in Brazil with her late husband Arthur Irwin, who served as Canadian Ambassador in that country from 1957 to 1959. A two-volume edition of Page's collected poems, The Hidden Room, was published by the Porcupine's Quill in 1997. In addition to writing, Page paints, under the name P. K. Irwin. She has mounted one-woman shows in Mexico and Canada. Her work has also been exhibited in various group shows, and is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Victoria Art Gallery, among others. P. K. Page was born in England and brought up on the Canadian prairies. She has lived in the Maritimes and in Montreal. After years abroad in Australia, Brazil and Mexico, she now makes her permanent home in Victoria, British Columbia.
 

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Contents © 2007 The Porcupine's Quill, Inc. - Updated: 19 August 2007 by Tim Inkster
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The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council
and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support
of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP)
is also gratefully acknowledged. Thanks, also, to the Government of Ontario
through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Publisher's Tax Credit
(OBPTC) programme and the Ontario Book Initiative.

The Porcupine's Quill is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production
of our books is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village.

We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid.
The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.