Bernadette Rule Biographical Sketch

HA&L Biographical Sketch Bernadette Rule Bernadette Rule has had six collections of poetry published, most recently The Literate Thief: Selected Poems, published by Larkspur Press.  The collection later published as Gardening At The Mouth of Hell won the poetry prize at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival in 1991.  In 2001 she won the individual poem prize for the Hamilton & Region Arts Council Literary Competition.  Rule also edited Remember Me to Everybody: Letters from India, 1944 to 1949 by Fred Turnbull, and has written a screenplay of that work.  She teaches English at Mohawk College, and is on the executive of the Hamilton Poetry Centre.   Rule writes: "Heaven Inverted was written after I stumbled across "Steepletop", the country estate of Edna St. Vincent Millay.  I was lost on the backroads of upstate New York last June and found the place purely by accident. But I knew she had called her home "Steepletop", so when I saw a small sign saying only that, I immediately followed it down a gravel road into the woods.  It was still unrestored, and I couldn't get inside, but had the grounds to myself for several hours of wondrous contemplation.  The swimming pool was filled with dead rodents, rotating slowly in a grotesque ballet.  The garden was half wild and the frogpond was throbbing.  Through the window I could see the front staircase where she fell to her death.  It was an experience of searing intensity for me, and that is where that series of poems came from."      Now, enjoy extrait d'œuvre by Bernadette Rule.      Sponsored by Pier 8 Group.          [This HA&L biographical sketch and introduction © 2010 BR.]