"Grendel's Mother" -- a new poem

Last weekend my poem "Grendel's Mother" was published in the Globe and Mail. You can read it here.

The poem is partly inspired by John Gardner's novel Grendel, a longtime favourite of mine. Telling the Beowulf story from the monster's point of view allows us to question the role of the monster in a narrative. I wanted to take that constructive revisionism one-step further and contemplate the mother's point of view. In Gardner's novel, Grendel's mother is a howling, mindless beast. In my poem, she is thoughtful and concerned about the mental state of her son.