A violent death will often overshadow a life. From poet Sylvia Plath to rapper Notorious B.I.G., there are those whose work will forever be searched for clues about their deaths. West Coast poet Pat Lowther, murdered by her husband in 1975, is one of their number.

Lowther’s name is probably best known to today’s younger Canadian writers through the literary prize in her honour. But what of Pat Lowther the poet? By the time of her death at age 40, she had produced three full-length books (This Difficult Flowring, Milk Stone, and A Stone Diary, the latter published posthumously). However, as none of these works remained in print, it was difficult for a younger generation to become familiar with her writing. All this changes with the release of this “new and selected” volume.

For the new work we have Lowther’s four children and a little detective work to thank. Drafts of poems found among her papers, together with an audio tape of her last public reading, revealed that at the time of her death Pat Lowther was working on a new manuscript to be called Time Capsule. The first of many eerie moments in this book comes in the introduction by daughter Beth, who writes that her mother envisioned this new, conceptual work as “a complex kind of witness…buried and dug up in the future.”

The premonitory qualities of Lowther’s work – particularly in A Stone Diary – have been noted before. But perhaps it’s not so surprising that a woman living in a violent relationship would imagine violent images, even her own death.

Reading the newly discovered poems in the final section of this book, one is struck by the maturity, the wisdom of this voice. The emotions and political consciousness of the writer still come through, yet she seems at the same time to be moving beyond individuality, beyond time, into the universal.

The reader of Time Capsule can’t help thinking that Pat Lowther would only have been 62 years old this year. It’s impossible not to wonder what she might have written had she lived. And yet, the richly varied poems in this collection are ample testament to her talent. It’s good to have her back.