Marita Dachsel

A wide-ranging anthology of personal essays from diverse voices about their relationships to the fibre arts.Sometimes, the reliability of a knit stitch, the steady rocking of a quilting needle, the solid structure of a loom, is all you have. During the pandemic, fiber arts newbies discovered and lapsed crafters rediscovered that picking up some sticks and string or a needle and thread was the perfect way to reduce stress, quell anxiety, and foster creativity, an antidote to endless hours of doom-scrolling.Chances are you or someone close to you is currently in an ecstatic relationship with yarn, thread, or fabric. As we struggle with the pressures, anxieties, and impacts of daily life, fiber arts--knitting, crocheting, embroidery, weaving, beading, sewing, quilting, textiles--can be an antidote, a mirror and a metaphor for so many of life's challenges. Part time machine, part meditation app, the simple act of working with one's hands instantly reduces the overwhelming scope of living to a human scale and the present moment.In this nonfiction anthology, writers and artists from different backgrounds explore their complex relationships to fiber arts and the intersection of creative practice and identity, technology, climate change, trauma, politics, chronic illness, and disability. In answer tothe mainstream craft space's tendency to centre the perspectives and careers ofwhite women, Sharp Notions showcases Black, Indigenous, South-Asian, Chinese, and queer artists and makers and the cultural traditions of craft indiasporic communities. Accompanied by full-colour photographs throughout, thesepowerful essays challenge the traditional view of crafting and examine therole, purpose, joy, and necessity of craft amid the alienation of contemporarylife.

There is beauty in the teacup like dresses requiring crinoline or beaded purses too small to carry anything but anger. — from “Inheritance” Marita Dachsel’s third poetry collection explores parenthood, love, and the grief of losing those both close and distant. In the tradition of Karen Solie and Suzanne Buffam, and with a touch of Canadian Gothic, Dachsel’s poetic skills unfold in a variety of brief and expansive forms. Authentic and controlled, full of complexity and disorder, her poems offer release despite their painful twists and topics. Readers across generations will find kinship in Dachsel’s grief-fuelled and vulnerable words.

Glossolalia is an unflinching exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, and sexuality as told in a series of poetic monologues spoken by the thirty-four polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Marita Dachsels second full-length collection, the self-avowed agnostic feminist uses mid-nineteenth century Mormon America as a microcosm for the universal emotions of love, jealousy, loneliness, pride, despair, and passion. Glossolalia is anextraordinary, often funny, and deeply human examination of what it means to be a wife and a woman through the lens of religion and history.

Marita Dachsel's debut collection is a visceral exploration of the moments of life that stand out in the pages of a family album and the intervals of memory. She playfully and poignantly documents first crushes, first times, weddings and trips across town, across water, and across continents. Dachsel perceptively sprinkles these moments with the details photographs don't reveal, as in "Dispatches from an Impending Marriage": "Don't talk to me about photographers./ Nothing will capture this. A printed paper/ will only mock -- / a gaudy misrepresentation/ a plastic Jesus on the mantle -- / two dimensions of fabric, teeth and skin."