Mimosa and other poems by Mary di Michele

Winner of the CBC Poetry Prize, 1980

“…intense and effective, revealing new landscapes and settlements so unlike those here…”
John Robert Colombo

“…her accomplished craft with words transforms her uncomprimising vision into poems that are resilient, powerful, and always true.”
Tom Wayman

“She has a grasp of her immediate situation and her strong presence is felt in a positive expression of the value of poetry.”
Jamie Hamilton, London Free Press

“It’s because di Michele places her own integrity so clearly on the line, because the poems do not lose sight of the mud in which they stand, that we follow her narrative, with trust.”
— Rosemary Sullivan, Books in Canada

“Global, tender yet sardonic, and perfectly in tune with a current, very sophisticated sense of the texture of ethnicity, di Michele never yields to simple notions or easy images.”
— Eric Folsom, Quill and Quire

“As with opera, it’s all in the voice, the lyrics, the inflection, the phrasing, the lack of false notes – and the passion. Most important, di Michele gives us a biographer’s sense of intimacy with her central character.”
— Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette

“Lyrical, metaphorical, yet also interrogative and unsettling, di Michele’s poetry explores the transformative powers of language, memory, and love.”
— The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English

Mary di Michele was born in Luciano, Italy in 1949. She immigrated to Canada with her family in 1955. She received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 1972 and then received her M.A. degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor in 1974, where she studied with Joyce Carol Oates.

Mary di Michele has published two other books of poetry and has contributed to a number of anthologies and numerous magazines and journals. She is now poetry editor for Toronto Life.