The fire which destroyed most of the village of Lytton on June 30, 2021, is an event British Columbians will not soon forget, a disaster that will likely be studied by historians of the future. Poetry can offer a means to capture the human experience during historical events, and Burning Sage, the debut collection from Lytton poet Meghan Fandrich, does just that.
Living just outside of town, Fandrich’s home was spared, but she lost her downtown business. Born out of a need to process and then share her emotional response to the fire that shattered her life and her community, Fandrich’s poems are raw, vulnerable, and honest. She shares moments from her immediate experience during the fire, but also from the difficult times afterwards when she continued to process how her life had been altered in so many ways.
Heart-wrenching visits to the site of her beloved Klowa Art Café are captured in several poems, including “Two”*:
The second time / I visited my ruins / was in the spring nine months after the fire the dangerous walls
