The Bat Had Blue Eyes

This poetry and prose book-length memoir begins in a prairie farmhouse where patterns of emotional injuries repeat unvoiced; undetected. In her mid-forties, Warland’s three voices (as a girl, a woman, and a writer) converge of their own accord and begin to “re/construct with great lucidity the act of forgetting” (Nicole Brossard). Warland writes: “in grade 3 I lost faith in words/At 43 I understood why.” As the three voices braid gradually together more and more, the narrative pulls you in to the poignancy and release of the unlocking the doors of “forgetting” and isolation. Dionne Brand wrote: ” Betsy Warland writes us with a dangerous and saving clarity that every woman must give birth to herself, find a new home, claim the truth of her memory.” After publication, The Bat Had Blue Eyes was performed as a 3-woman play in the Vancouver, BC Woman In View Festival and the intensity of the deep listening in the audience was remarkable.

 1993 Women’s Press