Emily McGiffin’s poems examine imperial violence and colonialism in South Africa and Canada.
Multifaceted and multi-voiced, Emily McGiffin’s poems explore the ongoing violence, destruction, and loss wrought by colonialism and capitalist extraction across time and geographic space, from Turtle Island to South Africa. McGiffin animates the spectres that haunt our private and public pasts. Her words remind us that we live in a world shaped by the events and people of the past, by suffering, and seizure, yet at times in the shadow of great acts of generosity. This world, largely built by iterations of violence, still concentrates wealth into the hands of a few, and McGiffin reminds us that power wants to hold its grip, to reproduce itself.
my body an ark
carrying successors like a chambered nautilus
what i was placed here to do
ferry the unborn
across the inhospitable land
make a bed amid the thornbush
make a tea table, forge the domestic
bliss of my country
raise them as heirs
draw our lineage in the sand
Multifaceted and multi-voiced, Emily McGiffin’s poems explore the ongoing violence, destruction, and loss wrought by colonialism and capitalist extraction across time and geographic space, from Turtle Island to South Africa. McGiffin animates the spectres that haunt our private and public pasts. Her words remind us that we live in a world shaped by the events and people of the past, by suffering, and seizure, yet at times in the shadow of great acts of generosity. This world, largely built by iterations of violence, still concentrates wealth into the hands of a few, and McGiffin reminds us that power wants to hold its grip, to reproduce itself.
my body an ark
carrying successors like a chambered nautilus
what i was placed here to do
ferry the unborn
across the inhospitable land
make a bed amid the thornbush
make a tea table, forge the domestic
bliss of my country
raise them as heirs
draw our lineage in the sand
Authors
Related Organizations
- Pages
- 80
- Published in
- Canada
- Series
- Oskana Poetry & Poetics
Table of Contents
- Into the Continent 3
- Northword Magazine Hamilton Arts Letters 7
- All their villages were destroyed and burnt all their fields turned into pasturage 9
- Capital Volume i 9
- Into the Continent 65
- Publishing new and established authors Oskana Poetry Poetics offers both contemporary poetry at its best and probing discussions of poetrys cultural role. 67
- Randy Lundy 67
- Series Editor 67
- Advisory Board 67
- Previous books in the series 67
- Measures of Astonishment Poets on Poetry 67
- The Long Walk 67
- Cloud Physics 67
- The House of Charlemagne 67
- Blackbird Song 67
- Forty-One Pages On Poetry Language and Wilderness 67
- Live Ones 67
- Field Notes for the Self 67
- Burden 67
- Red Obsidian 67
- Pitchblende 67
- Shifting Baseline Syndrome 67
- Synaptic 67
- The History Forest 67
- Dislocations 67
- Wrack Line 67
- Sherwin Bitsui Robert Bringhurst Laurie D. Graham Louise Bernice Halfe 67
- Tim Lilburn Duane Niatum Gary Snyder Karen Solie 67
- Capital Volume i 71
- From the Clyde to California 71
