From Bookshelf, November 2014 issue:
[…] Laurie MacFayden’s Kissing Keeps Us Afloat relates the experiences of knowing, “by tenth grade,” that one would “never, not ever, be one of the cool kids,” and of recognizing
![Joan Shillington, Sharanpal Ruprai, David Bateman, Laurie MacFayden - photo by Randall Edwards](https://spatherdab.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/quartet1.jpg?w=300)
(Photo by Randall Edwards)
“burgeoning yearnings,” yearnings “we never talked about / the kind two girls aren’t supposed to feel / for each other.” MacFayden’s book is also most evidently self-reflexive about the act of writing poetry, opening with the humourous, “things you need to know before giving your heart to a poet,” a series of warnings such as, “she will write poems about other lovers and find ways / to make you believe they are about you,” and concluding with the also humorous “getting the poem to sleep,” suggesting that one “bash it in the head with a rock.”
“Frontenac’s annual Quartet is … a reminder of the lively poetic work underway in this province.”
— Jason Wiens