FREE - Examined Life Series - "Breath Taking" Book Night with Carolyn Smart
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Please join us while we welcome local author, Carolyn Smart as she discusses her newest book being released on September 8, 2026 - “Breath Taking”.
Description form Book*hug Press.ca
An unflinching and tender recollection of illness, death, and grief, sensitively exploring the dynamic between the burden of care and the burden of dying.
Carolyn Smart’s latest poetry collection offers a striking meditation on the death of her partner of nearly forty years. Structured in five distinct parts, this deeply moving book unfolds like a tragedy—each section like an act in a play, the individual poems key scenes in a shared life coming to an end.
The language in Breath Taking is direct and exacting, with colloquial phrases that animate and complicate the emotional pressure of the work itself. Familiar references are scattered throughout—Gould Lake, Road 38—not as a device, but as indications of the everyday world that love, pain, and death inhabit.
Intimate and exhaustive, this generous document doesn’t lean on a belief in God or the afterlife, nor does nature’s continuity offer an uncomplicated source of comfort. Instead, what is revealed is the unvarnished reality of love and loss—the arduous responsibilities, the fragile attempts at recovery, the wishful thinking that what is gone will one day return. Breath Taking is a profound, vital reflection on the end of a life, and on those who go on living.
About the Author
CAROLYN SMART is the author of six previous poetry collections. She is a winner of the CBC Nonfiction Prize and was the director of creative writing at Queen’s University for three decades. Founder of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, she frequently works with other writers via mentorship and editing. Born in the United Kingdom, Smart lives north of Kingston, Ontario.
Preorder the book from Book*hug Press directly at https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/books/forthcoming/forthcoming-fall-2026/breath-taking-by-carolyn-smart/
or through Novel Idea at www.novelideabooks.ca/wp/
Description form Book*hug Press.ca
An unflinching and tender recollection of illness, death, and grief, sensitively exploring the dynamic between the burden of care and the burden of dying.
Carolyn Smart’s latest poetry collection offers a striking meditation on the death of her partner of nearly forty years. Structured in five distinct parts, this deeply moving book unfolds like a tragedy—each section like an act in a play, the individual poems key scenes in a shared life coming to an end.
The language in Breath Taking is direct and exacting, with colloquial phrases that animate and complicate the emotional pressure of the work itself. Familiar references are scattered throughout—Gould Lake, Road 38—not as a device, but as indications of the everyday world that love, pain, and death inhabit.
Intimate and exhaustive, this generous document doesn’t lean on a belief in God or the afterlife, nor does nature’s continuity offer an uncomplicated source of comfort. Instead, what is revealed is the unvarnished reality of love and loss—the arduous responsibilities, the fragile attempts at recovery, the wishful thinking that what is gone will one day return. Breath Taking is a profound, vital reflection on the end of a life, and on those who go on living.
About the Author
CAROLYN SMART is the author of six previous poetry collections. She is a winner of the CBC Nonfiction Prize and was the director of creative writing at Queen’s University for three decades. Founder of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, she frequently works with other writers via mentorship and editing. Born in the United Kingdom, Smart lives north of Kingston, Ontario.
Preorder the book from Book*hug Press directly at https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/books/forthcoming/forthcoming-fall-2026/breath-taking-by-carolyn-smart/
or through Novel Idea at www.novelideabooks.ca/wp/
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Where is it happening?
1900 JOHN COUNTER BOULEVARD, Kingston, ON, Canada, Ontario K7M 7H3
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherJames Reid Funeral Home, Crematorium & Reception Centre
