The World After Rain: Anne’s Poem

A Carol Shields Prize winner for her collection of fictions Code Noir, Canisia Lubrin now brings readers a long-form poetic tribute to her mother, praised by Dionne Brand as ＂incandescent＂

In this stunning new poem, Canisia Lubrin’s signature epic vision is distilled into a elegy to her mother, along an interwoven and unresolvable axis of astonishment that belongs as much to history as to today. Her lucid attention to what might be the oldest metaphor for grief is drawn from the searing gravity and resonance of the modern poet’s decisive, interior, and inexpressible meditation on love, time, and loss in the excesses of life’s ambitions.

woman from fine-print time, disclose to the world:
the forecast of our noontime births outdoors; how I distrust
every form of authority, chiefly my own astonishment
this poisoned wish is why I love, I bow to deserts,
these claychildren of forests everywhere
I love the rain, this is no secret, I love the solar wind;
hold their elliptical life in the wasteland of our third mouths
where flowers are invisible and bones are sanded and amusing,
and every heliopause cloud senses our head, how we astonish
our memories vining where no shade is enough,
since many who’ll feed me will refuse me their names,
and good, who knows what bargains I would make
with their meanings . . .

CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Also a finalist for the Trillium Award for Poetry and Governor General’s Literary Award, Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Fraser University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at University of Toronto. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry, and the Globe & Mail named her Poet of the Year. Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.