This semi-autobiographical collection of poetry offers an historical snapshot of domestic life that views women’s labour, relationships, and sexuality through a feminist lens.Chores is about families and the domestic work of settler women on the island of Newfoundland. A comedy and a tragedy in equal parts, Chores explores everyday life with all its pleasures and suffering.The simple, indirect, and accessible language of Chores creates vivid, recurring images of food, household objects, body… source
Scene
“I sprawl on Nan's bed, paint / my nails red, listen to VOWR's / Hymns for the Quiet Hour, the greatest / opera of our time, a weekly / tragedia lirica where no one gets out / alive. I am the wardrobe supervisor.”
Burton's poem opens by naming VOWR — a real St. John's radio institution broadcasting from Long's Hill — locating the domestic scene firmly in the city's vernacular cultural geography.
Maggie Burton, 'Radio Bingo,' Chores (Breakwater, 2023); reprinted in Poetry Pause by the League of Canadian Poets — source
