When Memory Speaks

With its intentional pun on the title of Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory, and obvious indebtedness to Wordsworth’s Prelude, Timothy Brownlow pushes his “little bark” into the treacherous tides of memory, evoking the lost paradise of his Irish childhood and youth, the various falls from grace of nationality, family, and self, the experience of disillusionment, exile, and self-laceration, followed by a happy marriage and the gradual restoration of faith in life, love, and the enduring power of once-loved places. This re-integration of the psyche is mediated throughout by the author’s reverence for the art of poetry, which has maintained his stability through spiritual heights and depths. By coming to terms with deep rifts in his inheritance, Brownlow asserts what Wordsworth calls “the growth of the poet’s mind.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timothy Brownlow, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Vancouver Island University, graduated in Modern Languages from Trinity College, Dublin, co-edited The Dublin Magazine for six years, and later completed a doctorate in English at York University, Toronto, with two years doing research at Pembroke College, Oxford. His book John Clare and Picturesque Landscape (1983) was published by the Clarendon Press; Studies in English Literature called it “the best study of Clare yet written.” Other works include a poetry collection, Climbing Croagh Patrick (1998), and a collection of essays, Hiding Places (2008). Brownlow and his wife live in Duncan, B.C.