Canisia Lubrin
Caption: B&W author photo of Canisia Lubrin for poetry in canada, featuring the author in the midst of a reading, seated on a stool in front of a microphone, looking down at the book in her hand. A single stage light shines above like a star.
Biography
2021 Windham-Campbell laureate, Canisia Lubrin, is a writer, editor and teacher. Her books include Voodoo Hypothesis (W&W, ‘17), Code Noir (Knopf, ’23). The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, ‘20) was listed for nine book prizes, including winner of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, Derek Walcott Prize, and finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She has been Writer in Residence at Queen’s University and was appointed the inaugural Shaftesbury Writer in Residence at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart, Lubrin completed her BA at York University and MFA at University of Guelph.
Poetics Statement
“My poetry focuses on the histories and continuance of Black life, thought, and art, and their possibilities. I am interested in language’s near-living qualities—what moves from writer to reader, what affects. Give me language and the ways it can signal practices of liberation because there’s always a question I need to ask even though it goes without an answer. In poetry I seek. Seeking is delight and trouble and entanglement.”
Sample of Poet's Work
Return #10 from “Act III: Ain’t I Épistémè?”
fear is an infection in a refugee camp
the Indian poet brings & greetings
from her students, at least the ones
she remembers stumbling out the rear
of her mind as I remember a fence
I was sure I'd never seen fondly weaving
dreams in God's Own Country, a vital
goodness in that world she believes & in
spite of all the hard things I won't bother
listing now, know a campaign ain't worth
shit unless shit stirs the mo'betta, pli mèyè
but what for & for whose sake do I feel
only anger, sweet jolts, disappointment
gone from me and hope ran cold — say
nothing of art, nothing of the variable logs
again, here: I have this problem with dream
In the Vault of Morning
for our elders
You arrive as found blade for this tale
I will tell you no gospel you know,
No crow’s throat will belt guesses
This year sound out the life I spend
In the company of those who are all
On their way to another world
And I am still on your way here
A mouth as a cold wind
And I rise from me as I rise from me
And I lift us bad as the night air
Bad as it in hurricane season
And sudden as we’re filled with the black wind
I feel nothing like dread
Hold still the planetary language
Who’ll tell you, really, what we’ve done
To speak of walking, of having walked
Where flocks, animals say, slow lorises, rest
Something of their tired and bud
To rot our chests of their bright moons
Moons disgorged from a twisting …
No, forget the moon. This time, we know
The moon does not heed our endless calling
Or duties for lubricating our worry
The endless looking up, like a moment ago
When I could mean just anything else
Break into a crowd, a too narrow room,
The Atlantic’s long rage, mean anything at all
Where must I consider to live
With whatever dried longing
We rise up to be in the morning rain
Return #14 from “Act III: Ain’t I Épistémè?”
how many ways can you disappear
a people, dignity by dignity, slant
word by slant word, who turn grave,
grave by grave by the curve and measure
of graves after typhoons, cyclones,
the mounting electrowastelands by the fresh-
water, and wrath of tumours as bright
brush on the forehead or covering over knees,
the work of minutes grating against
millions in flooded cities
what garments I wrap this zealous hand in
steering east all through the night, come
the morning I will not be long enough &
patient enough to level the quick word, a
-way out how many ways can you empty
a people, hope by hope, I do not venerate
men. at. all. I have a problem with dream
Voodoo Hypothesis: https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/voodoo-hypothesis
The Dyzgraphxst: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/611406/the-dyzgraphxst-by-canisia-lubrin/9780771048692