"In Tilling the Darkness, Susan Braley opens furrows-'dark earth pelts'- into the past: her girlhood on a farm in Southern Ontario; her choices, or lack of choices, as a daughter in a large family and a young woman raised in the Catholic Church. Braley does not romanticize rural life or the histories she recounts; siblings, soldiers, students, stones-all are viewed with a scholar's eye and drawn with a poet's precision. Darkness is tilled here, but much more is turned over as seasons unfold, as fields are seeded, harvested, and seeded again, as blood seeps and stains, as elegy and requiem give way to reimagination and rebirth." -- Laura Apol, author of A Fine Yellow Dust

"Have you swum in grain? Dive into Tilling the Darkness and you're in a hopper of kernels under the 'thick gold rain' of Braley's engrained clarity. With swift, spare intensity, she depicts the bountiful legacy of her early rural life and later, how she navigated inequities of gender roles. Her Via Femminile series gives us images of ordinary women who survive discrimination and violence--and thrive. These finely made poems plow darkness to reveal 'fire, earth, water, jewel." -- Jane Munro, author of False Creek