Regular readers of our blog may remember a post written by today's featured Woven Odes poet just a couple of months ago. In #PublishingSoWhite: 13 Ways to Diversify Your Press, Vivek Shraya offered not only concrete ways to diversify our publishing and reading communities but also called into question how we use the word "diversity" itself. Now Vivek is back with her first poetry collection, even this page is white, that is a bold personal interrogation of skin. Breaking down the barriers of what it means to be racialized, she writes in a range of styles to render everyday racism visible and undeniable.

Soon to be released by Arsenal Pulp Press (sign up for an email reminder here), George Elliott Clarke had this to say about this collection:

even this page is white demands that all of us account for our visions of 'colour' and/or 'race' frontally and peripherally, with ocular proofs. Shraya is the poet-optometrist, correcting our vision and letting us see our identities without rose-coloured glasses, but with naked optics. Her book isn't even-handed, but dexterous and sinister, in demonstrating, in revelatory poem after revelatory poem, why "often brown feels like but" and why even a good white person--with a 'golden heart'--'can be racist.' Reader, you have work to do!

Read on for an excerpt from "skeptic" and a short interview with Vivek! And don't forget to see if you can find her on our interactive poetry web.

ALU: Which particular poets or poetry collections have most inspired your writing (in general or for this particular collection)

VS:

• the black unicorn: poems, audre lorde
• citizen: an american lyric, claudia rankine
• for your own good, leah horlick
• kiyâm, naomi mcilwraith
• seva, sharanpal ruprai
• salt, nayyirah waheed

ALU: Are you inspired by a particular place, thing, or someone other than another poet?

VS: I am inspired by the challenge of making the invisible, the abstract, visible through art.

ALU: Do you have any particular writing rituals?

VS: Q-tipping my ears helps me think clearly, especially when I am at a bump in the writing. I go through a lot of q-tips!

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Follow along as we journey through the Canadian poetic landscape this National Poetry Month with our Woven Odes series. Vivek is our third featured poet from our constellation of poets. If you love our desktop wallpaper download, you can take all of them home with our Woven Odes post card set.

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