Renate Thomas was born in 1953 in Germany and immigrated to Canada in 1957, where she has resided ever since. She became a Canadian citizen in 2005. Thomas has worked at tree-planting, various jobs in the lumber industry, such as manufacturing picket-fence posts and telephone poles, and on the green chain. She also drove an eighty-ton truck for a mining company.<\/p>\n
In the midst of that busy life, she married and had two children. But the marriage did not last, and a car accident later robbed her of her eldest child. Renate picked up the pieces of her life, had a stint picking fiddlehead greens in the forests around Prince George, and later moved to Calgary. She eventually moved back to Terrace, BC and worked for the school board for ten years. Thomas now resides in the Fraser Valley city of Chilliwack, BC, the town in which she grew up.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife as I knew it,\u201d she said, \u201cended on August 16, 1999, with the loss of my son and my personal injury.\u201d Expressing her deepest emotions in her poetry helped Thomas recover, collect herself, and put things in perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book is a collection of lyric poetry that deals with the complexities of life, and embraces poetic reflection as a means to help heal. Set in four parts, it begins with the section Lifeboat Drill,\u00a0 a compilation contrasting childlike imagery with intense subject matters such as loneliness and yearning. “Kids with Balloons” expresses the themes of the transition from childhood to adulthood, while “Wedding Party” examines human relationships. The final section, “Night” is a meditation on the human condition, exploring complex issues such as depression, isolation and grace under fire.<\/p>\n
Reviews:<\/p>\n
Renate Thomas is an alchemist. Through poetry, she is burning in the fire of transformation and distilling her pain to create . . .
\nWhere she would be without the tool of her poetry nobody will ever know, but I am certain that without the pictures she paints through her words there would be no bridge between her pain and us, the readers… Her poetry makes her alive, human, full of anger and of pain, able to express the complete range of human emotion.
\nThe courageous act of putting her words into images is healing.
\n\u2014 Venus Soberanes
\nExpressive Arts Therapist<\/p>\n
The collection gives a sense of the emotional life of a fascinating human being.
\n\u2014 Michael Kenyon
\nPoet and Editor<\/p>\n
When life robbed Renate Thomas of the most precious gifts in the world: a child, a marriage, her sense of identity, she turned to her poetry as a means of dealing with these unimaginable tragedies.
\nSomewhere In the Night, Thomas\u2019s book of poetry, is a beautiful and powerful testament to the written word as a vehicle for healing, allowing us a place to move through loss.
\n\u2014 Bonnie Nish
\nMA, Arts Education
\nExecutive Director – Pandora\u2019s Collective Outreach Society
\nPhD, Expressive Arts Therapy (in progress)<\/p>\n
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