In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying

In the Slender Margin is a 2014 book that explores death and dying through the experiences of a palliative care counselor in a hospice. It received praise for its respectful sensitivity and intelligent open-endedness, offering an exploration of death's reality and mystery. The author hopes the book can add to discussions about mortality initiated by COVID-19.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Anvil Press Publishers Inc

Originally published in 2014, In the Slender Margin was enthusiastically received and applauded for its respectful sensitivity in dealing with a subject that is still, to many, an avoidable topic of conversation: death and dying.

Using her 20+ years of experience working as a palliative care counsellor in a hospice as a springboard for exploration, Joseph probes our collective knowledge of that final life experience that we all must face.

Intimately personal and wise, this award-winning poet gives us a deep and profound musing, a wise and lyrical meditation on the slender margin, that mysterious slip of geography between life and death.

From the Preface:

First published in 2014, In the Slender Margin was/still is, a meditation of sorts on death and dying. It did not prescribe then, nor does it now, ways to move through grief in order to find closure. I wrote the book as a way of understanding what I had seen in my years as a hospice counsellor.

In the process of writing and thinking about death from many different angles, I found the brother I had lost many years ago and, fifty years after his death, was able finally to mourn and hold him close.

COVID-19 has initiated many discussions about mortality. It is my hope that this book can add, in whatever way, to those conversations.

Praise for In the Slender Margin:

In the Slender Margin is intended as an exploration rather than a balm or solace, though it will no doubt be those things for some people. Its resonance comes, rather, from its intelligent open-endedness, its unflinching, simultaneous embrace of death's reality and persistent mystery.

A literate, free-association meditation on the final fact of life.

(Kirkus Reviews)

Intricate and beautiful . . . Provides an intimate language for grief and makes death less of a taboo subject.

ISBN-13: 9781772142150