ANNICK MACASKILL'S BANFF

Annick MacAskill writes: “Banff” is a poem from my latest collection, Murumurations, which just came out with Gaspereau Press. The book is a collection of queer love poetry that also explores the limits and intersections of sound, language, meaning, communication, noise, and song.

I’ve long been fascinated with love poetry. As I wrote this book, I was conscious of how I did (and did not) fit in with many of the (male, straight) models that have defined this tradition. I’m grateful for writers like Carol Ann Duffy, Audre Lorde, Anne Carson, Arleen Paré, and others who have given us their own takes on the established mode of the love lyric.

I had planned to launch Murmurations in Halifax on Thursday, May 14, at Café Lara. I had asked fellow Halifax poets Jaime Forsythe, Nanci Lee, and Sam Sternberg to read with me. I hope to re-schedule this event at some point in the future.

Annick MacAskill
BANFF

Clouds trip over mountains, lend
shadows to our hands, ungloved—
four small blessings for November,
yours larger than mine, though
not greater, you say, skirting
the path, pointing the way back
to the gallery. I say brother
but that’s not what I mean. I say
friend—though more than oil painting
or sculpture, I’d like to know
the weight of you, hold it
between my teeth or under
my tongue, a secret
like the white ermine in the snow.

Annick MacAskill’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. Her second full-length collection, Murmurations, was published by Gaspereau this spring. Originally from Southwestern Ontario, she now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. Visit her website at annickmacaskill.com. Murmurations can be ordered on the author’s website, from independent bookstores, and directly from Gaspereau Press.

REVISIONS MASTERCLASS: SARAH VENART, EPIPHANY

This is the fourth and last in a Poetry Month feature series with Sarah Venart, who walks us through the revisions history of some of the poems from her forthcoming book, I Am the Big Heart (Brick 2020). Comments and questions are welcome. What do you see changing as the poem develops?

Sarah Venart
EPIPHANY

Here I am, with one hour to find it.

Here I am in this tenth month, the peeler of pears, 

the slicer of hotdogs, cutting them into strips 

smaller than a child’s windpipe. 

Here’s my apologetic smile, accepted by the daycare 

in return for my children. So what is there to find 

in one hour on my desk’s shallow surface? 

I’ve mislaid all of it somewhere among 

my mind’s tiny grey flags, in the millions of scraps 

piling up. I left it behind in the dark bleeding gums 

of the dog that I loved, watching her clench yet another rock 

from the tide. That was twelve years ago. 

What was she looking for? 

What if she’d stopped looking?

Metaphors were easy then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. 

And I am the big heart, aren’t I?

When my black dog was being put down, in her last 

second I whispered, Squirrel. 

REVISION HISTORY


Creation: Winter 2014
The Tenth Month an unlikely location (Later became EPIPHANY)

for epiphany, or in the morning, 

or in the afternoon.  The mind full of 

tiny grey flags, millions quietly pile 

up.  Or the black bleeding gums of the dog 

again retrieving her dark rocks from the 

tides. What if I stopped looking up? Meta-

phor not only the sky, but migrating 

everywhere. And everyone is arrow, 

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons.  And 

I was the big heart, wasn’t I? When the 

dog was being put down. In her last 

second, I whispered, Squirrel. 

Revision for submission, Spring 2018
Epiphany

The tenth month an unlikely location
for it, or this morning or this afternoon when

you are a mother who used to be a poet.
You sit at the desk and have one hour to find it.

It’s here somewhere in the mind’s tiny grey flags
in the millions of scraps piling up.

Or maybe you left it in the dark bleeding gums
of the dog you love, watching her clench another

rock from the tide twelve years ago. What was she
looking for? What if she stopped looking?

Metaphors were easy then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. And
I am the big heart, aren’t I?

When the black dog is being put down, in her last
second I whisper, Squirrel. 

Revision May 2019

Epiphany

You have one hour to find it.

You’ve peeled and cut the pears, the leash already clipped on and trailing 

behind the dog as she turns to thump down at your feet to wait.

You’ve even prepared the apologetic smile the daycare accepts 

when you stand in their doorway.

You sit at the desk and have an hour to find it,

one hour in this tenth month, an unlikely location,

when you are a mother who used to be a poet.

It’s here somewhere in the mind’s assortment 

of grey flags, in the millions of scraps piling up. Or maybe you left it 

in the dark bleeding gums of the dog you love, watching her clench yet another rock 

from the tide twelve years ago. What was she
looking for? What if she stopped looking?

Metaphors were easier then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. And
I am the big heart, aren’t I?

When the black dog is being put down, in her last
second you whisper, Squirrel. 

Revision June 2019

Epiphany

You have one hour to find it.

You’ve peeled and cut the pears, the leash already clipped on and trailing 

behind the dog as she turns to thump down at your feet to wait.

You’ve even prepared the apologetic smile the daycare accepts 

when you stand in their doorway.

You sit at the desk and have an hour to find it,

one hour in this tenth month, an unlikely location,

when you are a mother who used to be a poet.

It’s here somewhere in the mind’s assortment 

of grey flags, in the millions of scraps piling up. Or maybe you left it 

in the dark bleeding gums of the dog you love, watching her clench yet another rock 

from the tide twelve years ago. What was she
looking for? What if she stopped looking?

Metaphors were easier then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. And
I am the big heart, aren’t I?

When the black dog is being put down, in her last
second you whisper, Squirrel. 

Revision July 2019 
Epiphany

Here I am, with one hour to find it.

Here I am in this tenth month, the peeler of pears, 

the slicer of hotdogs, cutting them into strips 

smaller than a child’s windpipe. 

Here’s my apologetic smile the daycare accepts 

in return for my children. So what is there to find 

in one hour on my desk’s shallow surface? 

I’ve mislaid all of it

somewhere in my mind’s tiny grey flags, 

in the millions of scraps piling up. 

I left it behind in the dark bleeding gums 

of the dog that I loved, watching her clench yet another rock 

from the tide. That was twelve years ago. 

What was she looking for? 

What if she’d stopped looking?

Metaphors were easy then, not only the sky,
but migrating everywhere. And now everyone is arrow

arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. 

And I am the big heart, aren’t I?

When my black dog was being put down, in her last 

second I whispered, Squirrel. 

EAVAN BOLAND: WHAT LANGUAGE DID

Eavan Boland
WHAT LANGUAGE DID


The evening was the same as any other.
I came out and stood on the step.
The suburb was closed in the weather

of an early spring and the shallow tips
and washed-out yellows of narcissi
resisted dusk. And crocuses and snowdrops.

I stood there and felt melancholy
of growing older in such a season,
when all I could be certain of was simply

in this time of fragrance and refrain,
whatever else might flower before the fruit,
and be renewed, I would not. Not again.

A car splashed by in the twilight.
Peat smoke stayed in the windless
air overhead and I might have missed it:

a presence. Suddenly. In the very place
where I would stand in other dusks, and look
to pick out my child from the distance,

was a shepherdess, her smile cracked,
her arm injured from the mantelpieces
and pastorals where she posed with her crook.

Then I turned and saw in the spaces
of the night sky constellations appear,
one by one, over roof-tops and houses,

and Cassiopeia trapped: stabbed where
her thigh met her groin and her hand
her glittering wrist, with the pin-point of a star.

And by the road where rain made standing
pools of water beneath cherry trees,
and blossoms swam on their images,

was a mermaid with invented tresses,
her breasts printed with the salt of it and all
the desolation of the North Sea in her face.

I went nearer. They were disappearing.
Dusk had turned to night but in the air--
did I imagine it?--a voice was saying:

This is what language did to us. Here
is the wound, the silence, the wretchedness
of tides and hillsides and stars where

we languish in a grammar of sighs,
in the high-minded search for euphony,
in the midnight rhetoric of poesie.

We cannot sweat here. Our skin is icy.
We cannot breed here. Our wombs are empty.
Help us to escape youth and beauty.

Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in.

(from In a Time of Violence)

Posted in memory of Eavan Boland, 1944-2020

Image, The Independent

ANCALAO AND MICHELSON: A TRILINGUAL ARGENTINE ROAD POEM

Seth Michelson writes: Liliana Ancalao (b.1961) is a leading Mapuche poet. She was born in Puel Mapu, also known as the Republic of Argentina. The Mapuche have traversed the southern third of South America for some twenty-thousand years, including their vital travel along an Andean route that would be appropriated and formalized by Argentina into National Route 40. Liliana's poem reflects on this transformation. Women of the Big Sky is the first single-author book of poetry in English-language translation by a female Mapuche writer from territorial Argentina.

(Note: Mapuzungun words and phrases in Seth Michelson's English translation are glossed below)

a photo on route 40

it no longer runs

from the Senguerr River to the Genoa

no matter how much mate and talk

we pour over

when walking the route

pu lamngen

it once led us to Copawe’s brown ash

another time the white wind didn’t recognize us

this time we returned splitting fog

always straining sight

not to miss footprints

the groundwater of memory

surges from the land

here dinosaurs blackened in their own oil

here the ash of the fires that burned

he of the choike feet

he who killed his father

he who left, teaching us the loneliness in waiting for him

still

here the snort of Orkeke’s and Casimiro’s horses

on one of their trips

to the Mapuche Applelands

and here those without memory

those who no longer raise their arms to

kalfuwenufuchá kalfuwenukushe

here the weather-beaten men

ready to make lassos of rawhide

and subject again the bull Chupey

to the brutal

beautiful

bellowing like that of the konas

trapped in thunder

the thunder that our enclosed

people

and our lonco Inakayal heard

in the basement of this museum of the horrors

of the holocaust

o how the memory goes to its affections

rises like the dew that chills the ankles

rises to the banks of these rivers

and stops us a moment on this route

we go out into air that bends us

that combs our hair as if scrub brush

and we take a photo of this image

for which we need no reminder.

kiñe azentu futa wariarupu 40 mo

Senguer leufü püle ka Genoa pule

alünmaiñ iñ akun

fentre mate ka fentre ngutram

kuchalleliñ rume

rupaliñ futa wariarupu mo

pu lamngen

kiñe rupa amufuiñ Kopawe ñi pu trufken püle

ka rupa  plang kürüf kangeitueiñ mew

tufachi rupa wiñoiñ  ti chiway nülakünuiñ

rumel kintuleiñ ti pukintuwe

ñamümlafilu pünon

memoria ñi pu napa

kangeltuy mapu mew

tufa mew  pu dinosaurios kurüyiwiñ mo

tufa mew  kütral ñi pu trufken

fey, choikenamun, üiyümefi

fey lantufi ñi chau

fey amutuy, kimeleiñ mew:

 ti  kizulen, petu ünümafiñ

tufa mew  pu neyün Orkeke engu Kasimiro yu kawel

kiñe amukan mo

Manshana Mapu püle

tufa mew puche  memorianokechi

pu che witrapramlayngun pu lipang

kalfuwenufuchá kalfuwenukushe

tufa mew chi pu wentru yafükünuwn

zewman lashu ñi pu trülke mo

nüniefin ka rupa chupey toro mo

füchañma mo

tremo

koatun chum pu kona

muleyngun tralkan mo

pu tralkan allkutuyngun iñ che

nürüftükuwn

iñ lonko Inakayal

pu sótano mo yañ museo

ñi holokausto

ay chum amuy ti memoria ayün mew

wenupray trürngey ti mülum firkümfiüy pu palipali

pranüy inal yu leufü

katrütunieiñ mew alumna tufa fucha wariarupu mo

tripaiñ neyen mapu mo müchameiñ mew

runkaeiñ mew trürngey pu neneo

zeumiñ kiñe azentu tufa azentun

recuerdo molaiñ

una foto en la ruta 40

desde el río Senguerr al Genoa

no se llega más

por más mate y conversación

que vayamos lavando

si habremos andado por esta ruta

pu lamngen

una vez nos dirigíamos a las cenizas marrones del Copawe

otra, nos desconoció el viento blanco

esta vez, volvimos abriendo la neblina

siempre esforzando la vista

para no perder la huella

las napas de la memoria

se distinguen en la tierra

acá los dinosaurios ennegrecidos en su propio aceite

acá las cenizas de los fuegos que encendió

el de las patas de choike,

el que tuvo que matar a su padre,

el que se fue, enseñándonos la soledad de esperarlo

aún

acá el resoplido de los caballos de Orkeke y Casimiro

en uno de sus viajes

al Manzana Mapu

y acá los sin memoria

los que no levantaban más los brazos a

kalfuwenufuchá kalfuwenukushe

acá los hombres curtidos

como para hacer lazos con sus tientos

y sujetar otra vez al chupey toro

al tremendo

al hermoso

bramando como los konas

que se quedaron en los truenos

los truenos que escuchaba nuestra gente

encerrada

y nuestro lonko Inakayal

en los sótanos de ese museo del horror

del holocausto

ay cómo se va la memoria a la querencia

asciende como el rocío que enfría los tobillos

sube hasta las orillas de estos ríos

y nos detiene un rato en esta ruta

salimos al aire que nos dobla

nos peina como a neneos.

y sacamos una foto de esta imagen

para la que no necesitamos el recuerdo.

Glossary
Pu lamngen: my brothers and sisters

Copawe: Copawe, or Copahue, is a stratovolcano in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile

Choike: ostrich

Orkeke and Casimiro: Orkeke (c.1810-1884) was a Tehuelche cacique in territorial Argentina who led his people up and down Route 40 before being captured by the Argentine army for resisting the state’s authority and transferred to Buenos Aires, where he died. Of note he also willingly guided the British explorer George Chaworth Musters on his journey through Patagonia in the 1850s. Casimiro Biguá (1819-1874) was a Tehuelche cacique in territorial Argentina who on 3 November 1869 raised the Argentine flag. Of note, for his effort to recognize Argentine sovereignty over Tehuelche and Mapuche land, he had been named a Lieutenant Colonel of the Argentine Army by Argentine President Bartolomé Mitre on 5 July 1865.

Manzana Mapu: This refers to the swath of Patagonia containing vast apple orchards, which featured prominently in the Mapuche diet of the region and were termed manzanache or manzaneros by the Mapuche.

Kalfuwenufuchá kalfuwenukushe: this is Liliana’s Mapuche divine invocation, and it literally translates as Elders of the Blue Above

Konas: warriors

Women of the Big Sky (Word Works, 2020; in Mapuzungun, Spanish, and English) was to debut at AWP 2020. That event was cancelled. Copies may be ordered through the press.