Burning Sage Poems from the Lytton Fire

On the day that Lytton, BC burned to the ground, Meghan Fandrich ran from the flames. She saw the village turn into a black pillar of smoke, and went home after a month-long evacuation to its ashes. Her house, on the edge of the fire, was saved; her community and her small business were not. Life as she knew it was gone, and somehow, in spite of the trauma and the ongoing onslaught of natural disasters, she had to keep going. Living. Surviving. Burning Sage shares Meghan’ s deeply personal story of the fire, the ensuing trauma, and the path out of it. But it is also a human story, a universal story, of loneliness, fragility and beauty. The poems follow the arc of shock, fear, and anger, and the impossibility of single parenting in a burned-up town. They tell of a connection, a love, and the way that feeling understood can help us understand ourselves. The poems in Burning Sage share a vivid portrait of grief and heartbreak and, ultimately, of healing.

Meghan Fandrich lives with her young daughter on the edge of Lytton, BC, the village that was destroyed by wildfire in 2021. She spent her childhood and much of her adult life there, in Nlaka’ pamux Territory, where two rivers meet and sagebrush-covered hills reach up into mountains. For the past decade, she ran Klowa Art Café , a beloved and vibrant part of the community; Klowa was lost to the flames. Burning Sage is Meghan’ s debut poetry collection.