A Gift of the Prairie
LMLCC / 18 December 2014

A Gift of the Prairie: Writing from the Southern Shores of Last Mountain Lake Edited by Bernadette Wagner Published by Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre Review by Courtney Bates-Hardy $20.00 ISBN 978-0-9937215-0-2 A Gift of the Prairie combines all of the best things a poetry anthology can be: it’s short, focused, and includes a variety of work and writers. The anthology was the brain child of Bernadette Wagner, who served as the literary artist-in-residence at the Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre in Regina Beach, Saskatchewan. Wagner worked quite closely with the community and wanted to showcase their work, so she sent out a call for writing about the Last Mountain Lake area. According to her foreword, she wasn’t sure at first that there would be enough of a response from local writers to create the anthology. However, as she states, the community came together and soon offered up their memories and writings about the area. A Gift of the Prairie is a short and satisfying read at a slim 71 pages. It starts off strong, with four beautifully minimalist poems from Jillian Bell and ends on an equally strong note with poetry from Paul Wilson, whose most recent book of…