The Hungry Dark

Maria van Sundert, bibliographer and TSLer, has lived in Huntingdon, Montreal, and Sherbrooke, Quebec, where she earned a doctoral degree in the comparative Canadian literature programme at the Université de Sherbrooke. She also worked as one of the researchers compiling the Comprehensive Bibliography of Comparative Canadian aed Foreign Literatures, 1867-1995.

Maria has worked as poetry co-editor for Matrix. In 1994, she received a graduate degree in Library and Information Studies from McGill University. She is a co-compiler of the Bibliography of Studies in Comparative Canadian Literature/Bibliographie d’etudes en littérature canadienne comparée, 1980-1987, Département des lettres et communications, Université de Sherbrooke, 1989. Her M.A. in literature involved the translation of a poetic play by Michel Garneau, Émilie ne sera plus jarnais cueillie par l’anémone (1981, translated 1988).

The Hungry Dark is her first published collection of poetry.

her sleeveless pink and black dress

             hangs to dry on the verandah

courteously, it futters in the wind

            were her legs within hugging a corner post

her feet knotted on this side

            her toes now delicate and golden

her arms hanging from the clothes line

            like a frame against the sky

her fingers now red from the weight

            of her body except for her dress

lifelike, folding unfolding at will

ISBN 0-9698258-5-4

66 pages, Paperback
Price $9.95 US