Becoming the Harvest

Becoming the Harvest invites the reader to contemplate the fierce transformative initiations of ageing and death. Le Bel takes readers through a poignant poetic journey inspired by her intimate experience with the deaths of her loved ones, as well as her acceptance, and often delight, in her own ageing body. Her end of life education began fifteen years ago when she cared for an older sister diagnosed with a terminal illness. It was a soulful time, an unexpected threshold into the beauty and sorrows of living and dying. She sweetened and sharpened her views on ageing and death, finding hope and nuance amid the stark reality. With an unflinching and at times playful eye, Le Bel challenges our cultural stories about the end of life, rejecting the merciless stereotype of the Grim Reaper, and poking gentle fun at our common euphemisms for the end. These are poems to welcome the end years, to claim them, touch them, lightly and deeply. To see ageing and death not as the enemy but as a call to live life more fully, to love more thoughtfully.

Pauline Le Bel has worked professionally as an actor, singer, writer in theatre, film and radio, and is the author of four books, most recently, Whale in The Door, a critically acclaimed history of Howe Sound, published by Caitlin Press. She is the founder and creative director of Knowing Our Place, a reconciliation initiative on Bowen Island. In her Way to Go! workshops, she calls upon her poetry to open hearts and minds for thoughtful conversation on the end of life.