Poetry City moves on to Vancouver!

I heartily urge you to read and reread “Of the Hollow” (and its containing vessel MxT) not because it’s set in Vancouver, or because it references a book (Taxi!) sitting beside me right now, or because it nails our troubled relationship with nature, or because it has many lines you can’t help but say aloud (“We come in leather and lashed sprigs of heather”), but because it speaks with beauty and power of being women and artists in a world that seems not to know how much it needs both. I think. I’m going to read it ten more times.– Mike, New Star Books

 

Want more poetry featuring British Columbia? Check out our Poetry City Project Pinterest board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog

Notes on "Of the Hollow" from poet Sina Queyras

I used to know a man who had lived on the street much of his life, well,  I’ve known many, but this was one of the first I met. He worked in a  cafe in Gastown where he had scraped it together enough for a room with a  hot plate. I was 18 and working at an import store. We became friends  over coffee. One day he took me up on the roof of his building and  played the flute to the sisters. It was really magical. He felt very  strongly about them.

The thing about Vancouver is, no matter how  tough life can get, and of course it can really tough, there are always  those mountains to look up to – and it’s an equal opportunity view, you  can glimpse them from an apartment building in Surrey, or Delta, as much  as a monster home on the west side, or even after you leave. I haven’t  lived in Vancouver for nearly two decades now, but the lights on Grouse  come to me as a kind of compass point, I imagine myself walking toward  them and I feel good about being a human in the world.

About MxT

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas Queyras posits as a way to measure grief in her new book. Her poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: MxT, published by Coach House Books, is Queyras at her most powerful.

"Of the Hollow" is a prose poem from MxT that traverses the landscape that surrounds Vancouver – to the islands, Cypress Provincial Park, Grouse Mountain – taking in the scents and feels of the coastal city, but also namechecks a few Vancouver writers and connects them to their natural environment.

About poet Sina Queyras

Sina Queyras is the author of the Lambda Award–winning Lemon Hound, Expressway (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award), and the novel Autobiography of Childhood (shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award). She often writes for the Poetry Foundation and runs the online journal Lemon Hound. You can follow her on Twitter at @lemonhound.

 

Want more poetry featuring British Columbia? Check out our Poetry City Project Pinterest board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog

Today’s Poetry City poem is a long one but it’s definitely worth a read as it comes to us from award-winning poet Sina Queyras. Her collection MxT, published by Coach House Books, is just the latest in a body of work that should be consumed by all Canadian poetry lovers as it offers so much. In "Of the Hollow" Queyras takes us on a journey around Vancouver.

Notes on "Of the Hollow" from poet Sina Queyras

I used to know a man who had lived on the street much of his life, well,  I’ve known many, but this was one of the first I met. He worked in a  cafe in Gastown where he had scraped it together enough for a room with a  hot plate. I was 18 and working at an import store. We became friends  over coffee. One day he took me up on the roof of his building and  played the flute to the sisters. It was really magical. He felt very  strongly about them.

The thing about Vancouver is, no matter how  tough life can get, and of course it can really tough, there are always  those mountains to look up to – and it’s an equal opportunity view, you  can glimpse them from an apartment building in Surrey, or Delta, as much  as a monster home on the west side, or even after you leave. I haven’t  lived in Vancouver for nearly two decades now, but the lights on Grouse  come to me as a kind of compass point, I imagine myself walking toward  them and I feel good about being a human in the world.

About MxT

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas Queyras posits as a way to measure grief in her new book. Her poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: MxT, published by Coach House Books, is Queyras at her most powerful.

"Of the Hollow" is a prose poem from MxT that traverses the landscape that surrounds Vancouver – to the islands, Cypress Provincial Park, Grouse Mountain – taking in the scents and feels of the coastal city, but also namechecks a few Vancouver writers and connects them to their natural environment.

About poet Sina Queyras

Sina Queyras is the author of the Lambda Award–winning Lemon Hound, Expressway (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award), and the novel Autobiography of Childhood (shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award). She often writes for the Poetry Foundation and runs the online journal Lemon Hound. You can follow her on Twitter at @lemonhound.

 

Want more poetry featuring British Columbia? Check out our Poetry City Project Pinterest board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog

Notes on "Of the Hollow" from poet Sina Queyras

I used to know a man who had lived on the street much of his life, well,  I’ve known many, but this was one of the first I met. He worked in a  cafe in Gastown where he had scraped it together enough for a room with a  hot plate. I was 18 and working at an import store. We became friends  over coffee. One day he took me up on the roof of his building and  played the flute to the sisters. It was really magical. He felt very  strongly about them.

The thing about Vancouver is, no matter how  tough life can get, and of course it can really tough, there are always  those mountains to look up to – and it’s an equal opportunity view, you  can glimpse them from an apartment building in Surrey, or Delta, as much  as a monster home on the west side, or even after you leave. I haven’t  lived in Vancouver for nearly two decades now, but the lights on Grouse  come to me as a kind of compass point, I imagine myself walking toward  them and I feel good about being a human in the world.

About MxT

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas Queyras posits as a way to measure grief in her new book. Her poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: MxT, published by Coach House Books, is Queyras at her most powerful.

"Of the Hollow" is a prose poem from MxT that traverses the landscape that surrounds Vancouver – to the islands, Cypress Provincial Park, Grouse Mountain – taking in the scents and feels of the coastal city, but also namechecks a few Vancouver writers and connects them to their natural environment.

About poet Sina Queyras

Sina Queyras is the author of the Lambda Award–winning Lemon Hound, Expressway (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award), and the novel Autobiography of Childhood (shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award). She often writes for the Poetry Foundation and runs the online journal Lemon Hound. You can follow her on Twitter at @lemonhound.

 

Want more poetry featuring British Columbia? Check out our Poetry City Project Pinterest board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog

Today’s Poetry City poem is a long one but it’s definitely worth a read as it comes to us from award-winning poet Sina Queyras. Her collection MxT, published by Coach House Books, is just the latest in a body of work that should be consumed by all Canadian poetry lovers as it offers so much. In "Of the Hollow" Queyras takes us on a journey around Vancouver.

Notes on "Of the Hollow" from poet Sina Queyras

I used to know a man who had lived on the street much of his life, well,  I’ve known many, but this was one of the first I met. He worked in a  cafe in Gastown where he had scraped it together enough for a room with a  hot plate. I was 18 and working at an import store. We became friends  over coffee. One day he took me up on the roof of his building and  played the flute to the sisters. It was really magical. He felt very  strongly about them.

The thing about Vancouver is, no matter how  tough life can get, and of course it can really tough, there are always  those mountains to look up to – and it’s an equal opportunity view, you  can glimpse them from an apartment building in Surrey, or Delta, as much  as a monster home on the west side, or even after you leave. I haven’t  lived in Vancouver for nearly two decades now, but the lights on Grouse  come to me as a kind of compass point, I imagine myself walking toward  them and I feel good about being a human in the world.

About MxT

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas Queyras posits as a way to measure grief in her new book. Her poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: MxT, published by Coach House Books, is Queyras at her most powerful.

"Of the Hollow" is a prose poem from MxT that traverses the landscape that surrounds Vancouver – to the islands, Cypress Provincial Park, Grouse Mountain – taking in the scents and feels of the coastal city, but also namechecks a few Vancouver writers and connects them to their natural environment.

About poet Sina Queyras

Sina Queyras is the author of the Lambda Award–winning Lemon Hound, Expressway (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award), and the novel Autobiography of Childhood (shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award). She often writes for the Poetry Foundation and runs the online journal Lemon Hound. You can follow her on Twitter at @lemonhound.

 

Want more poetry featuring British Columbia? Check out our Poetry City Project Pinterest board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog