Sheree Fitch
Biography
Sheree Fitch - Photo Courtesy of Author
Sheree Fitch, born 3 December 1956 in Ottawa, Ontario, is an educator, literacy activist and author of award winning poetry, picture books, nonfiction, plays and novels for all ages. She holds a B.A. from St. Thomas University, an M.A. from Acadia University, and honorary doctorates from both St. Mary's and Acadia for her large contribution to Canadian literature and education. She spent time teaching in the Faculty of Education at the University of New-Brunswick, and she also taught children’s literature at St. Thomas University. She now spends a fair amount of time touring schools and various libraries, both in Canada and abroad. Fitch and her husband, Gilles Plante, divide their time between Washington D.C. and River John, Nova Scotia.
In 1987, her Fitch’s first book, Toes in my Nose, was published by Doubleday Canada. Her second children’s book Sleeping Dragons All Around (1989), won the Atlantic Bookseller’s Choice Award in 1990. Since then she has published numerous books for children and young adults, as well as a volume of poetry, many of which have received literary awards.
Sheree Fitch has been a goodwill ambassador for Unicef since 1994, and she won the Vicky Metcalf award for Children’s Literature in 1998. Her work as a poet and literacy educator has taken her to the Arctic, Bhutan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Belize and Mexico. Fitch is currently the Honorary Spokesperson for the New-Brunswick Coalition for Literacy, and each year she sponsors a writing competition for New Brunswick Youth. In addition, she is Honorary Spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Read to Me Program. Her latest venture in literacy education includes completing a three-year summer writer in residency for Somebody's Daughter in Nunavut.
For a more extensive biography of Fitch, please visit the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.
In 1987, her Fitch’s first book, Toes in my Nose, was published by Doubleday Canada. Her second children’s book Sleeping Dragons All Around (1989), won the Atlantic Bookseller’s Choice Award in 1990. Since then she has published numerous books for children and young adults, as well as a volume of poetry, many of which have received literary awards.
Sheree Fitch has been a goodwill ambassador for Unicef since 1994, and she won the Vicky Metcalf award for Children’s Literature in 1998. Her work as a poet and literacy educator has taken her to the Arctic, Bhutan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Belize and Mexico. Fitch is currently the Honorary Spokesperson for the New-Brunswick Coalition for Literacy, and each year she sponsors a writing competition for New Brunswick Youth. In addition, she is Honorary Spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Read to Me Program. Her latest venture in literacy education includes completing a three-year summer writer in residency for Somebody's Daughter in Nunavut.
For a more extensive biography of Fitch, please visit the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.
Additional Information:
Author's Personal Website
Author's Wikipedia
“Questions” Series (SeaStacksBooks)
Educational Talk at St. Thomas University
Fitch’s YouTube Channel
Author's Podcast
Author's Personal Website
Author's Wikipedia
“Questions” Series (SeaStacksBooks)
Educational Talk at St. Thomas University
Fitch’s YouTube Channel
Author's Podcast
on Thursdays we hear the crunch of the garbage truck
run to watch the garbage man working
underneath the sun
he is young and tanned and wears no shirt
just cut-off jeans
his hair is honey blond
beneath a red scarf turban
a medallion on a chain
dances on his chest
as he builds up his momentum
orang-utan swinging from truck to curb
half-running half-leaping
with a rhythm that suggests
he is keeping time to music
the sun shining down on his shoulders
sweat-slippery biceps bulging
hamstrings hard as hammers
pirouetting pirate
in an innovative free-style
garbage day ballet
we call the garbage man
Baryshnikov
I tell my children
watch him and remember
when
you do the thing you do with joy
you create a thing of beauty
this is the challenge and the task
of being human:
to take all life's garbage
transform it into dance
I bore them with my metaphor
and my children always wary
of my vision from my window
think he's just a man
in a hurry
to get home for a beer
Published in In This House Are Many Women (Goose Lane Editions).
Used with permission of the author.
run to watch the garbage man working
underneath the sun
he is young and tanned and wears no shirt
just cut-off jeans
his hair is honey blond
beneath a red scarf turban
a medallion on a chain
dances on his chest
as he builds up his momentum
orang-utan swinging from truck to curb
half-running half-leaping
with a rhythm that suggests
he is keeping time to music
the sun shining down on his shoulders
sweat-slippery biceps bulging
hamstrings hard as hammers
pirouetting pirate
in an innovative free-style
garbage day ballet
we call the garbage man
Baryshnikov
I tell my children
watch him and remember
when
you do the thing you do with joy
you create a thing of beauty
this is the challenge and the task
of being human:
to take all life's garbage
transform it into dance
I bore them with my metaphor
and my children always wary
of my vision from my window
think he's just a man
in a hurry
to get home for a beer
Published in In This House Are Many Women (Goose Lane Editions).
Used with permission of the author.
Critical Analysis: Sensuous Description and the Poetics of the Everyday in Sheree Fitch's "Garbage Man"
Andréa Peters (for ENGL 3103: Advanced Poetry Workshop)
Sheree Fitch’s poem “Garbage Man,” from her book In This House Are Many Women, takes an instance of the mundane— watching a garbage man collect bags from the curb— and turns it into something poetic. The poem exemplifies scholar Wesley McNair’s advice that “thought will not be visible in [a] poem unless you give the feet a place to stand, the hands something to touch, the eyes a world to see” (48).“On Thursdays we hear the crunch of the garbage truck,” (1) Fitch’s poem begins, evoking a specific and widely recognized facet of everyday life, thereby giving the poem its place to stand. Fitch gives the poem its eyes through her detailed description of the young garbage man with his “honey blonde” hair (6), “red scarf turban” (7), and the medallion that “dances on his chest” (8-9). Finally, Fitch gives the hands something to touch, describing the garbage man with phrases like “sweat-slippery biceps”(16), and “hamstrings hard as hammers”(17), surely chosen for their ability to evoke the sense of touch.
As a result of Fitch’s attention to the details of the senses, readers of “Garbage Man” are immediately drawn into the telling. The structure of the poem allows the images created by the narrative to form a powerful and coherent platform upon which the story can develop into something more poetic. Fitch takes a mundane and unglamorous activity and, through her sensuous description, draws attention to its beauty. The garbage man, through the right eyes and with the right description, becomes something worthy of the poet’s attention: “a pirouetting pirate/ in an innovative free-style/ garbage day ballet” (18-20).
McNair also remaks that “a poet does not speak in generalities, but in a code of images,” whereby the reader should “see what you mean” (48). Again, “Garbage Man” does exactly that: turns something mundane (watching a garbage man do his job) into a time-stopping moment of beauty, a ballet performance on the street. It is in the fourth and fifth stanzas that poetry becomes a visual art: “when you do the thing you do with joy/ you create a thing of beauty”(26-27), the narrator advises, you “take all life’s garbage/ [and] transform it into dance” (30-31).
However, manipulating words to create vivid images is not the only way the visual aspect of a poem works to create meaning. In addition, McNair suggests that “free verse makes its appeal not only to the ear, but to the eye. Break lines and arrange stanzas to show the mind at work on the page shaping the thought of your poem. The space around the poem in free verse often has its own visual meaning. Make that wordlessness articulate”(47). In “Garbage Man,” Fitch makes meticulous work of crafting her line and stanza breaks to create an important visual coherence between structure and content.
First, there is the stanza break between the lines:
a medallion on a chain
dances on his chest
as he builds up his momentum
ornag-utan swinging from truck to curb
half-running half-leaping
with a rhythm that suggests
he is keeping time to music (8-14).
This quite literally makes the readers’ eyes jump lower on the page, and gives them a feeling for the momentum of the Garbage Man’s dancing. Another example of a meaningful space around the poem emerges in the line break between “remember,” and “when:”
we call the garbage man
Baryshnikov
I tell my children
watch him and remember
when
you do the thing you do with joy
you create a thing of beauty (21-27).
This gives the reader the impression that time goes by, and that the poem really takes a moment to remember and recognize the preciousness of finding what it is in life that really transforms all its garbage into something of beauty.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Fitch, Sheree."Garbage Man." In This House Are Many Women. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2004.
McNair, Wesley. “Advice for Beginning Poets.” Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry, Carnegie Mellon UP, 2003. 47-55.
Sheree Fitch’s poem “Garbage Man,” from her book In This House Are Many Women, takes an instance of the mundane— watching a garbage man collect bags from the curb— and turns it into something poetic. The poem exemplifies scholar Wesley McNair’s advice that “thought will not be visible in [a] poem unless you give the feet a place to stand, the hands something to touch, the eyes a world to see” (48).“On Thursdays we hear the crunch of the garbage truck,” (1) Fitch’s poem begins, evoking a specific and widely recognized facet of everyday life, thereby giving the poem its place to stand. Fitch gives the poem its eyes through her detailed description of the young garbage man with his “honey blonde” hair (6), “red scarf turban” (7), and the medallion that “dances on his chest” (8-9). Finally, Fitch gives the hands something to touch, describing the garbage man with phrases like “sweat-slippery biceps”(16), and “hamstrings hard as hammers”(17), surely chosen for their ability to evoke the sense of touch.
As a result of Fitch’s attention to the details of the senses, readers of “Garbage Man” are immediately drawn into the telling. The structure of the poem allows the images created by the narrative to form a powerful and coherent platform upon which the story can develop into something more poetic. Fitch takes a mundane and unglamorous activity and, through her sensuous description, draws attention to its beauty. The garbage man, through the right eyes and with the right description, becomes something worthy of the poet’s attention: “a pirouetting pirate/ in an innovative free-style/ garbage day ballet” (18-20).
McNair also remaks that “a poet does not speak in generalities, but in a code of images,” whereby the reader should “see what you mean” (48). Again, “Garbage Man” does exactly that: turns something mundane (watching a garbage man do his job) into a time-stopping moment of beauty, a ballet performance on the street. It is in the fourth and fifth stanzas that poetry becomes a visual art: “when you do the thing you do with joy/ you create a thing of beauty”(26-27), the narrator advises, you “take all life’s garbage/ [and] transform it into dance” (30-31).
However, manipulating words to create vivid images is not the only way the visual aspect of a poem works to create meaning. In addition, McNair suggests that “free verse makes its appeal not only to the ear, but to the eye. Break lines and arrange stanzas to show the mind at work on the page shaping the thought of your poem. The space around the poem in free verse often has its own visual meaning. Make that wordlessness articulate”(47). In “Garbage Man,” Fitch makes meticulous work of crafting her line and stanza breaks to create an important visual coherence between structure and content.
First, there is the stanza break between the lines:
a medallion on a chain
dances on his chest
as he builds up his momentum
ornag-utan swinging from truck to curb
half-running half-leaping
with a rhythm that suggests
he is keeping time to music (8-14).
This quite literally makes the readers’ eyes jump lower on the page, and gives them a feeling for the momentum of the Garbage Man’s dancing. Another example of a meaningful space around the poem emerges in the line break between “remember,” and “when:”
we call the garbage man
Baryshnikov
I tell my children
watch him and remember
when
you do the thing you do with joy
you create a thing of beauty (21-27).
This gives the reader the impression that time goes by, and that the poem really takes a moment to remember and recognize the preciousness of finding what it is in life that really transforms all its garbage into something of beauty.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Fitch, Sheree."Garbage Man." In This House Are Many Women. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2004.
McNair, Wesley. “Advice for Beginning Poets.” Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry, Carnegie Mellon UP, 2003. 47-55.
Bibliography
Primary Sources (Poetry):
Fitch, Sheree. “A Few More Notes on the Nature of Friendship.” Antigonish Review 141/142 (2005): 33. WorldCat.
---. "Because We Love, We Cry." The Advocate, pictouadvocate.com, 24 April 2020.
---. In This House Are Many Women. Fredericton, N.B.: Goose Lane Editions, 1993.
---. Kiss The Joy As It Flies. Halifax, N.S.: Vagrant Press, 2008.
---. “The Laundry Hamper and the Moon.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport, NS: Roseway, 1999. 156-163.
---. You Won't Always Be This Sad: A Book of Moments. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2019.
For a list of Fitch’s children’s books, please see her website, shereefitch.com.
Secondary Sources
Babinski, Bob. “Sheree Fitch: Reaching for the Moon.” The Atlantic Advocate 81.6 (1991): 9-11.
Boyle, Catherine. "Sheree Fitch." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. St. Thomas University, 2011. <http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/fitch_sheree.html>.
Catto, Susan. “Fitch Goes after the Grown-Ups.” Quill & Quire (2008): 8-9.
Dyer, Hadley. “Nonsense Poet Explores New Forms.” Quill & Quire (1997): 61-62.
Fitch, Sheree. Interview with Dave Jenkinson. “Sheree Fitch: Prize Winning Writers of ‘Utterature.” Emergency Librarian 21.1 (1993): 66. Academic Search Premiere.
Jones, Raymond E. and Jon C. Stott. “Sheree Fitch.” Canadian Children’s Books: A Critical Guide to Authors and Illustrators. Don Mills, ON: Oxford UP, 2000. 126-129.
Kroop, Paul. “Sheree Fitch: Poetess in Motion.” Today’s Parent (2000): 22.
Lynes, Jeanette. “‘A Purple Sort of Girl’: Sheree Fitch’s Tales of Emergence.” Canadian Children’s Literature 90 (1998): 28-37.
Fitch, Sheree. “A Few More Notes on the Nature of Friendship.” Antigonish Review 141/142 (2005): 33. WorldCat.
---. "Because We Love, We Cry." The Advocate, pictouadvocate.com, 24 April 2020.
---. In This House Are Many Women. Fredericton, N.B.: Goose Lane Editions, 1993.
---. Kiss The Joy As It Flies. Halifax, N.S.: Vagrant Press, 2008.
---. “The Laundry Hamper and the Moon.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Ed. Jeanette Lynes. Lockeport, NS: Roseway, 1999. 156-163.
---. You Won't Always Be This Sad: A Book of Moments. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2019.
For a list of Fitch’s children’s books, please see her website, shereefitch.com.
Secondary Sources
Babinski, Bob. “Sheree Fitch: Reaching for the Moon.” The Atlantic Advocate 81.6 (1991): 9-11.
Boyle, Catherine. "Sheree Fitch." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. St. Thomas University, 2011. <http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/f/fitch_sheree.html>.
Catto, Susan. “Fitch Goes after the Grown-Ups.” Quill & Quire (2008): 8-9.
Dyer, Hadley. “Nonsense Poet Explores New Forms.” Quill & Quire (1997): 61-62.
Fitch, Sheree. Interview with Dave Jenkinson. “Sheree Fitch: Prize Winning Writers of ‘Utterature.” Emergency Librarian 21.1 (1993): 66. Academic Search Premiere.
Jones, Raymond E. and Jon C. Stott. “Sheree Fitch.” Canadian Children’s Books: A Critical Guide to Authors and Illustrators. Don Mills, ON: Oxford UP, 2000. 126-129.
Kroop, Paul. “Sheree Fitch: Poetess in Motion.” Today’s Parent (2000): 22.
Lynes, Jeanette. “‘A Purple Sort of Girl’: Sheree Fitch’s Tales of Emergence.” Canadian Children’s Literature 90 (1998): 28-37.
