Between the Silences
Between the Silences invites us to sit in the back row of Family and Youth Court, where important decisions are made everyday – decisions that can affect our children, our families, our friends, our neighbours, our communities. The fortunate among us will never be inside a courthouse. But Diane Buchanan takes us there with her poetry. Writing with the heart of a woman who is both nurse and mother, she uses poetry not to lull us but to wake us up. In a series of word snapshots and evocative portraits she creates a collage of images both thought-provoking and heartrending. Between the Silences reveals that strange and poignant world on the other side of the courthouse door.
Awards/Award Nominations
Shortlisted for the Acorn-Plantos Award
Reviews
More powerful than a camera or artist’s pencil could ever be in capturing what happens in a court of law. ~The Branch Line 7
Buchanan goes further than most of us would dare to tread into the courthouse and its stories, which are occasionally hopeful, many times tragic and ultimately human. She observes as though she has been a juror on many cases, seeing both sides and aiming to find the truth somewhere in the middle. She breaks down generalizations, giving us many points of view… And through her individualized narratives, she challenges the stereotypes, not only of young offenders, but of criminals and people in custody battles as well. This makes Between the Silences not only a beautiful book of poems, but an important one, too. Jocelyn Grossé, Fast Forward
This book works the way good courtroom drawings work…. [I]t nevertheless, renders with quick, deft strokes, the heart of the matter, and the accumulative effect of all this portraiture and careful observation serves, as the title so aptly indicates, how important it is to find the human element. ~Richard Stevenson, The Danforth Review
Between the Silences reminds us that fully-realized poetry not only takes us places we’ve never quite been, but changes us with its urgent presence. At first, Buchanan seems a courtroom artist sketching. Soon, however, she immerses us along with herself in the raw narrative of the court’s arbitration in the ruins of our private lives. The accumulative sense is a profound loss of home. The poet discovers there is “no common denominator.” The loss is everywhere. Buchanan’s skillful rendering of these poems, the respectful restraint with which they are written, and the heart by which they are inspired, are rare. ~ Betsy Warland
The courthouse poems are a gift to all of us. ~ Patrick Lane
Samples
The Haunting
There are ghosts in court today. Ghosts of bullied victims past. The courtroom shivers with their swirling. The odor of their fear has haunted the defendant for some time now. Fourteen when his peers first began to threaten and harass. A year older when that fear led him to arm himself. Those ghosts hover nearby. as he takes the witness stand, a pretty boy with gelled bleached hair, dressed meticulously in black. He tells the judge about that day in the gymnasium, the day those same boys picked a fight while the whole class cheered, the day his fear was so severe he grabbed the lock and chain from his gym bag and swung it around until a teacher interfered, called the police. He was charged with possession of a weapon with intent to injure. Today he’s found guilty – because, of course, by law he is, although mitigating circumstances allow the penalty to be less severe. As he stands for sentencing he hears he’s free to go, to unarm himself, do community service hours, but it will be much harder to turn off that fear, lay to rest those victims of bullying past, leave their ghosts at the courtroom door.
Little Girl Lost
He brought her into the courtroom. She wants to take her home. Four year old Maggie plays around their feet where they stand at opposing counsel tables telling the judge their sides. Voices angry, bodies tense they list the reasons why they can’t agree on custody. The little girl crawls out from under the tables, takes Daddy’s hand then reaches across that hostile space to grab Mommy’s hand and hangs there lost in the uncertainty of the in-between.
