Farideh de Bossett was born in Tehran, Iran. She completed a medical degree in psychiatry in Switzerland before moving to Canada where she interned in Quebec and then finished her residency in Toronto in 1972. She worked as a staff psychiatrist and as an assistant professor in psychiatry until 1991 when she opened a private practice in Toronto. De Bossett died on November 21, 2012, just months after her first collection of poetry was published.
Poetry
A Tilt: Poems
Toronto: Inanna Publications and Education, 2012.
PS8607.E222 T54 2012
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
The poet’s many years as a practicing psychiatrist has given her the opportunity to look at, and experience, life with an acute intensity of joy and pain. Farideh de Bosset’s poetic and cultural roots go back to Iran, where she was born. “Poetry was a part of everyday life for me,” explains de Bosset, “while growing up in Iran, it was the language of our household. My parents often communicated by reciting poetry, one starting a line, the other continuing.”
Each poem in this debut collection records the events of a woman’s everyday life, as well as the poet’s experiences of talking to, and healing with, patients, and friends and family, as well as the impact of literature and art, the countries she’s lived in and visited, and, of course, her dreams and her understanding of those dreams on her work, her creation of art, and her life.
The title, A Tilt, refers to life being lived on a fine balance, or a tilt, and this experience is intensified as an immigrant. de Bosset says, “An immigrant is always between two languages, two cultures, like living on a “tilt” and being in danger of falling.”
Links
Publisher Inanna Publications