Delani Valin
Biography
Délani Valin is neurodivergent and Métis with Nehiyaw, Saulteaux, French-Canadian and Czech ancestry. She studies for her master’s in professional communications at Royal Roads University, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Vancouver Island University. Her poetry has been awarded The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Award. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Adbusters, Room, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us and Bawaajigan. She is on the editorial board of Room and The Malahat Review, and lives on traditional and unceded Snuneymuxw territory (Nanaimo, BC).
Poetics Statement
“I started experimenting with poetry when I was a child, using words scraped from a Thesaurus that I didn’t hear much in my day-to-day life. (Crestfallen and jaunty were early favourites.) I had a sense that if I used these neglected words in the right combination, I could show them care.
I think I still try to do this, but with subject matter more than with specific words. Many of my poems contain images of creatures, beings and experiences that have been somehow maligned or ostracized. I try to create space around them where they might be, at the very least, seen without so much stigma or judgement. I think I do this act of care for myself in my more confessional exercises, allowing what might be considered unpalatable parts of me to just exist in the lines.
I internalized a lot about what is considered palatable and what is not. Growing up as one of the only Métis students in my school and being late-diagnosed as autistic meant that I spent a lot of time trying to understand and be understood. In my daily life, these efforts led to masking my normal instincts, an enduring feeling of shame and a sense of being at war with myself.
Poetry is a truce. It’s a space of wholeness and connection. Here, we can look together and respect the moth and the slug and the butterfly in equal measure, and hopefully approach a better sense of who they really are. ”
Sample of Poet's Work
Dear Gregor Samsa
(From shapeshifters, Nightwood Editions 2022)
I hope it wasn’t insensitive to bring
you a garden snail in our wretched states.
See it in its terrarium, stomach foot and shell,
how graceful it paints the glass with slime.
We skitter to your room. I remind you I’m here
at great risk to myself. I’m covered in scarves
but there are parts of me I can’t hide.
The snail stretches its tentacles—
slow radial twirls, eye stalks scanning
moss and twig, unseeing my monstrous
shape. I place the glass box by your bedside
and I fill you in: Britney Spears
is free at last. They’re still making
fried chicken sandwiches with
fried chicken buns, etcetera. I shiver
when you brush against my thorax—
grotesque rippling of skeleton and skin.
It’s getting late, I say. It’s nearly dawn and
the snails will be out for their morning meals,
my neighbours will soon be gathering
in the lobby to make eye contact and chatter.
It’s been good. I unfurl my legs beneath me—
tarsi and tibiae waterlogged from rain
and ragged. I haven’t looked at yours and I won’t.
You croak, Do you still love me? I tell you the snail
likes its shell gently scrubbed with a toothbrush.
I tell you the snail is partial to apple, cucumber,
mushroom, boiled and cooled carrots.
I tell you what else is palatable.
Michelin Man
Amidst the scent of gasoline, I soap and scour the inky smears from this round body,
Cleanse oil, grease, curses—bitch hips, chick tits—clinging to this spellbound body.
In a dream I was sanded down, polygonal and sharp as a fawn’s angled knee
Insults from guys in the shop glanced off the tapered thighs of that sound body.
God is a good night’s sleep. God is the sun on my shoulders before I shield them,
On the day the doctor refused me treatment, God was the rib of a greyhound’s body.
A sun radiates from my belly through rage, ulcer, through ragged contempt,
Circular hatred, yet I’m no more my mind than my left toe in this battleground body.
Open your mouth and say sumptuous when I thrust. Let me show you my power,
I am Mars in furs—this is fullness: tenderness and force against your unbound body.
I am the banquet of my being, Bibendum. Devoured at last by embodied life,
Weight may wax, wane. But the moon of my belly is the altar of my crowned body.
(From Shapeshifters, Nightwood Editions, 2022)
What Are the Ethics of Picking a Stinging Plant?
I’ve been daydreaming of nettle. The underside of a flat leaf foaming with formic acid, little barbs licking wind. I’ve never harvested it before, but I think about bringing my scissors down to the lake. I wouldn’t lay tobacco down like I’m supposed to, because I’d need to rip open a du Maurier and scatter the arsenic. That’s bad medicine, I think. Bad ethics. I have black tea instead. I don’t have access to pure tobacco here, is that okay? I daydream of just taking the top three inches from ten or twelve plants.
I’m sleepwalking. It’s the smell of hot soup wafting from the lake, leading me. Tadpole and lily pad and skunkweed stew, or is Campbell’s? I’m cooking up a way to wake up from this, but in the meantime, I tucked teal rubber gloves into my sweatshirt pocket. I felt real peace last summer when I filled bags with blackberries to burst. But neither fruit nor thorn know my name on this land, so I haunt their patches like a ghost.
The problem is that I’m a stranger to myself. And so, when Nettle asks, Where are you from and who is your grandmother? I can answer. It’s all in the documents at home. It’s all there in case you need proof. But when Nettle lowers their voice and asks, Okay and who are you? I think about my sadness and my credentials and a story I made up when I was seven. I say something like, I’m just trying to be here.
Nettle looks, and sees. Soup’s on, they say. They mean nettle minestrone. They mean I am also in the broth. So when I wake up one day, my hands will still be stinging.
(From prism international)
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