Tell Them It Was Mozart

Linked poems that uncover the ache and whimsy of raising children on the autism spectrum.

Through public judgments, detouring dreams and unspoken prayers, Tell Them It Was Mozart, Angeline Schellenberg’s debut collection, traces both a slow bonding and the emergence of a defiant humour. This is a book that keens and cherishes, a work full of the earthiness and transcendence of mother-love. One of the pleasures of this collection is its playful range of forms: there are erasure poems, prose poems, lists, found poems, laments, odes, monologues and dialogues in the voices of the children, even an oulipo that deconstructs the DSM definition of autism. From a newborn glossed and quivering to a child conquering the fear of strange toilets, Tell Them It Was Mozart is bracing in its honesty, healing in its jubilance.

Michelangelo slept in his clothes and seldom ate Newton lectured to empty rooms at scheduled times if no one showed up to hear him ? Only staying where room numbers were divisible by three, Tesla tested turbines in his mind, would not touch round objects ? Charles Darwin formulated the theory of natural selection, the foundation for our understanding of the diversity of life on earth: advantageous traits survive Mozart meowed on tables - from Posthumously diagnosed

Praise for Tell Them It Was Mozart:
By turns, Angeline Schellenberg’s words are blunt, musical, unflinching, transcendent. Her speaker raises two children on the autism spectrum, but she is never a martyr, never a victim, never a saint. Schellenberg has drawn a woman who turns the experience inside out - finding its humour, its turbulence, and ultimately, its joy. - Kimmy Beach

Angeline Schellenberg’s poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2, TNQ, Rhubarb, Room, Geez, Wordgathering, Lemon Hound, and The Society, as well as in anthologies. Her first chapbook, Roads of Stone (The Alfred Gustav Press), was released in May 2015. Her poetry won third prize in the 2014 Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award Contest and was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2015 Poem of the Year. Angeline lives in Winnipeg with her husband, their two teenagers, and a German shepherd/corgi.