Sheila Stewart’s stunning poetry collection, If I Write About My Father, (Ekstasis Editions, 2024) dismantles the patriarchal religious ideologies of Sheila’s upbringing by a protestant minister, while sustaining the emotional intimacy experienced in familial relationships.
Sheila explores the daughter-father relationship, uncovering the complexities of growing up as the minister’s only daughter in a family shaped by church and manse in small-town southern Ontario. She braids narrative and lyric, the textures of liturgy and memory. While critiquing patriarchal weight and constraint, the work explores how a particular religious upbringing shapes thinking, the rhythms of language, and the fabric of consciousness.