BOOKS

 

The Fifth Season

In The Fifth Season, award-winning journalist, essayist and poet Cori Howard explores the seasons of a woman’s life, from marriage and motherhood to divorce, what she aptly names “disaster dating” and reinvention. Through the arc of midlife, these poems offer a map back to the self and a return to longing and new freedoms.

In poetry that is raw, honest and personal, Howard carries the reader through the thresholds of her life, illuminating the experiences of womanhood and the questions we ask ourselves during times of transition and reimagination.

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  • “The Fifth Season is exquisite, brave, and shatteringly honest; a powerful portrait of womanhood through marriage, divorce, mothering, and midlife and into the fierce possibilities that lies beyond."

    - Carol Shaben, author of Into the Abyss

  • “Cori Howard's The Fifth Season captures the complicated and complex feelings about motherhood and selfhood in mid-life. Her delicate, lyrical language will delight readers, even as she depicts deep sorrow and seasons of loss. This book is a gift to women who've had to let go, let go, and then let go again, and it reminds us all that pleasure might be waiting for us after we mourn.”

    -        Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of GROUP and B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found

  • “Cori Howard’s gorgeous poems are a mirror reflecting our lives back to us. In her hands, a woman’s Fifth Season is a time for reflection, pain, joy, rebirth, and laughter. If you’re feeling invisible, these poems will make you feel seen.”

    -       Elizabeth Renzetti, author of What She Said: Conversations About Equality

  • “Cori Howard's The Fifth Season is a reckoning with what it means to be a woman in a season of change. Life is not linear, and neither is this collection, with poems that revel in a riotous, hilarious, painfully naked freedom. I read these poems with amazement and gratitude for their irrepressible female insistence on the right to claim joy, to live in joy, even if the path leading there is painful. "Listen," says the poet "we are all alone in search of love/don’t be afraid/your time is coming. Hallelujah to every resonant, passionate line."

    -        Rachel Rose, former Poet Laureate of Vancouver and author of The Octopus Has Three Hearts and The Scarlet Daughter

  • "The Fifth Season is a collection that pulses and aches with the want of a bigger love and a bigger life, and the illusions we have to puncture to get there. Cori Howard’s has crafted a collection that is wild and vulnerable and muscular and stubborn and feral, poems thudding with ‘frantic hooves,’ thundering towards freedom.”

    - Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author and host of CBC’s Commotion

Books by Cori Howard – Poetry & Essays on Motherhood & Midlife

Most mothers don’t have time for long conversations.

They may want them, crave them, begin them again and again—but they are constantly interrupted by kids, partners, work and the day-to-day of busy lives. Between Interruptions is a remarkable collection of original essays by Canadian writers that explores what is unspoken, cut off or lost in those interrupted conversations.

Between Interruptions asks what becomes of us when our children’s lives interrupt our own. What prayers, what cries, what taboo thoughts are suddenly left unspoken?

Marina Jimenez struggles with her decision to return to her job as a journalist—in a war zone. Carrie-Anne Moss lets us into her home during her self-imposed, forty-day seclusion after the birth of her first son. Chantal Kreviazuk learns to surrender to the limitations of motherhood. Joanna Streetly struggles to find a balance between protecting and letting go. Elizabeth Renzetti and Katrina Onstad search for friends in mommyland. And Estee Klar-Wolfond finds perfection in autism. Refreshingly honest, Between Interruptions highlights the differences and similarities between mothers today and generations past.

It is, without a doubt, a conversation worth having.

  • “Written by mothers for mothers, this book is full of essays that will have readers laughing out loud, crying in sympathy, and nodding their heads in recognition – but only if they are mothers themselves. Those outside of the club just won’t understand.”

    Quill and Quire

  • “Provocative, funny, and honest, Between Interruptions highlights the transformation to motherhood and its impact on women’s identity, ambition, and relationships.”

    CBC

  • “I couldn’t put the book down as I went from one story to another. For me, this was a pleasant departure from the ‘miracle’ culture of motherhood.”

    Kelly, Goodreads Review

  • “This is one of those books that you read once … and then continually go back to. It is a perfect pick-me-up when things aren’t going as well as you’d hope, a great way to celebrate when things are. Love this book and highly recommend it to all moms and moms-to-be. The writing is excellent and the stories, very inspiring!”

    Amazon Review

  • “This book tells it like it is and offers reassurance and hope. It is thoughtfully organized and very readable. Great personal memoirs, realistic portrayals of the often tormenting feelings of motherhood as one adjusts to the new realities of life.”

    Amazon Review

 

INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS

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Learn more about Cori’s writing.