The Rose in Winter is the final book by Tanya Kern, a superb and haunting lyric expression that seems to exist out of time. Her third book to be published by Ekstasis Editions was sent to her publisher two days before her tragic suicide, and so has both a sense of finality and incompleteness at the same time. Tanya Kern’s first book of poems, The Erotics of Memory, was a deep intimate statement, radiant with dark and rich sensuality. With her second book Ave she moved from the politics of the flesh to matters of the spirit. Erotic, surreal, thoughtful and intensely personal, the poems of Ave explode with a gentle ferocity. The Rose in Winter explores deeper wounds of desire and ecstatic grief in a startingly original way. In dynamic turns of speech, the compression of joy and pain, these poems express the agony and deep longing at the centre of the heart. The clarity of these final poems will be remembered.

Tanya Kern was among the best new poets in our time for she rejected the easy narrative line for the richer grail of deeper mysteries. The Rose in Winter is a continuation of the enigmas begun wth her first two books, The Erotics of Memory and Ave. Read these poems and celebrate and weep, for they are imbued with the terrifying authenticity of true poetry. The poems in The Rose in Winter are not mere poetic affectations––these lines resonate with an awe-full seed, that when bit into, erupt with the flavour of a dark honey, lingering long on the tongue.
Richard Olafson

Tanya Kern grew up in a hard rock town in northern Ontario and lived for many years in BC with her two daughters. During her lifetime she published a chapbook, Glory Days, with Reference West, and two previous books, The Erotics of Memory and Ave. She died in 2010 shortly after completing The Rose in Winter.