'The Venus Year' Sylvia Linsteadt

Sylvia's latest book is a beautiful representation of her life and surroundings within one Venus cycle. Poetry and short stories are woven between the months in this richly descriptive and imaginative book.

Every nineteen months Venus circles Earth, changing from morning star to evening star and back again. This book is the almanac of one Venus year in the author’s life. A year of loss and of gifts. A year of transformation, spent between the Greek island of Crete and her home in California. It is at once a memoir and myth, monthly seasonal notes and glimpses of daily life, and the poems and short stories that came from those days, with a Greek language translation woven through to honour the island’s native tongue.

In these pages, the mythic princess Andromeda becomes a starry dragon while Europa rides her white bull across the Aegean. Narcisus is born from a bulb. Kalliope and Calypso tell their own stories. A woman falls between worlds and lands in a garden. She carries clay lamps into darkness, harvests oils, and monitors a dying beehive. She grieves, and births, and is born.

Through her, so too are we.