Tall, Grass, Girl by Tanis MacDonald

A feminist crow at a history of violence, Tall, Grass, Girl is essential reading for those who are tired of healing narratives that ring hollow, but who also believe hope is curative.  

In this searingly honest lyrical collection, Tanis MacDonald examines living in the space between belonging and non-belonging, between victimhood and bold survivorship. She makes no apologies and pulls no punches, taking us on a journey through adoption and assault, to subsequent escapes, and eventually, into full-feathered survivor joy.

This book contends that making one’s way to tenderness can take years, that a good life can come from harsh beginnings, that feeling crazy in an impossible world is more than normal—it’s necessary. Surviving the past can be hard work, and to grow tall, to push past expectations, is to become a person who can refuse and thrive. These poems are a moving testament to remembering oneself via harsh and beautiful terrain, to transmuting past violence, and to finding one’s way back to being a tall, grassy girl self.

Praise for Tall, Grass, Girl

“Right from the first page, Tall, Grass, Girl brings it and serves it up hot. Rich with wordplay, rage and sly humour, MacDonald leans into biography, girlhood and womanhood with a steely gaze. Her poems seethe with joyful resistance. I love this collection and know I will return to it again and again.” —Nancy Jo Cullen, author of Nothing Will Save Your Life

“Myth-making, language-playing, stitching genealogies for the adopted, for the childless, for the female future, Tanis MacDonald has written a book of love poems for ‘the girl who’s me, / and the me who’s me’: avian, planted, riverine, every line a reclamation, every memory faced somehow both squarely and slant. I read Tall, Grass, Girl and I stand taller. I sprout wings.” —Laurie D. Graham, author of Calling It Back to Me

“The poems in Tall, Grass, Girl blow wide open a startling affective range: they stomp and sing, they havoc-wreak, they meditate. This immersive collection has the sweep of a manifesto, yet the granularity of a naturalist who forays some days in combat boots, other days with exposed bare toes in river grass. Fragile as birch bark, tough as iron. At once solid and spectral, Tall, Grass, Girl does the work magnificently.” —Jeanette Lynes, author of The Paper Birds

Press Coverage

“Jane d’Eau”: Read an excerpt from Tall, Grass, Girl by Tanis MacDonald —League of Canadian Poets blog