Certifiable

"Sharp-witted... [Mordecai] uses rhyme and metre comfortably, applying these old devices to archly contemporary language... verifiably fine." — Chronicle Herald

"In Certifiable, language is both weapon and redeemer. Pamela Mordecai's facility with language, her striking rhythms and word play, and, above all, her wicked humour lift Certifiable from the pull of madness to the divine." — Olive Senior

"Very rich linguistically, imaginatively, and thematically." — D.M. Thomas

"Rhythmic verve combined with linguistic vivacity both recreates experience — heady, sensuous, intoxicating, dangerous, painful — and contains it, wittily and wisely." — Edward Baugh

"Certifiable invokes subversive, irreverent, but infinitely lyrical Jamaican women's voices and affirms their singing, not to deny suffering, but to give account of it, in a complex emotional landscape and without sumission or despair." — Elaine Savory

Pamela Mordecai is a vital link between the literary worlds of Canada and Jamaica as a poet, editor, publisher, teacher, actor, and former TV presenter. A veteran anthologist, she co-edited the ground-breaking collections Jamaica Woman and Her True-True Name, the first collection of fiction by women from English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries. She has published five other books of poetry, including the performance poems de Man and de Book of Mary. Mordecai has also published a short story collection, Pink Icing, and a novel, Red Jacket, that was a finalist for the Rogers Prize for Fiction. Her poems have been selected for numerous anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse, The Heinemann Anthology of Caribbean Poetry, Eyeing the North Star, Sisters of Caliban, and Wheel and Come Again. Born and raised in Jamaica, Mordecai now lives in Kitchener, Ontario.