by Gifford Savage
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| My stepfather sexually abused me when I was a child. My mother, Alice Munro, chose to stay with him. In the shadow of my mother, a literary icon, my family and I have hidden a secret for decades. It’s time to tell my story. —Andrea Robin Skinner, Toronto Star, updated July 15, 2024. Photo by Steve Russell. |
We mourned her passing,
those of us eclipsed by her shadow,
who place words on pages
in vain attempt to come close
to her masterful levels of wit,
humour and care.
Amongst the greats of short-story fiction,
she was honoured and celebrated,
commemorated in glowing eulogies.
Lifted to the heights of genius
in obituaries dwelling on achievement.
Perhaps we can understand
why they didn’t mention the unmentionable,
those writers who loved her words so much,
for whom Her stories are life itself.
A month later it all fell crashing down to earth.
What the tributes had carefully left unsaid,
what they had known since the verdict in 2005.
This mother who wrote so powerfully
about the complications of everyday life,
who wrote from a feminine perspective
of girls and boys, of men and women—
while all along, beyond the pen and page was
the guilty abuser she protected,
the dirty secret held close,
the terrible reality denied,
the Nobel prize gathering dust,
the little girl she had betrayed,
no longer a child, bravely breaking her silence—
along with our delusions of greatness.
Gifford Savage is from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His poetry has been published in various journals, including The Storms, The Bangor Literary Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Agape Review, and previously in The New Verse News. He was included in the Community Arts Partnership anthology "Across the Threshold," has performed his poetry on local television station "Northern Visions TV," and was winner of the Aspects Festival Poetry Slam 2022.