Endlings
By Joanna Lilley
Endlings takes us across continents and through the long expanse of aeons to give voice to the dead. In poems that are lyrical, exact, and deeply melancholic, Joanna Lilley demands audience for the final moments of animal extinction. From the zebra-horse quagga and chiding dodo, ... Read more
Overview
Endlings takes us across continents and through the long expanse of aeons to give voice to the dead. In poems that are lyrical, exact, and deeply melancholic, Joanna Lilley demands audience for the final moments of animal extinction. From the zebra-horse quagga and chiding dodo, to the giant woolly mammoth and delicate Xerces Blue Butterfly, the haunting, urgent words of these "endlings" cut to the bone to expose the brutality of Nature and the devastating repercussions of human ignorance and intent, while giving hope that our humanity will help save what remains.
Joanna Lilley
Joanna Lilley is the author of the short story collection, The Birthday Books, and the poetry collections, If There Were Roads and The Fleece Era. Worry Stones is her first novel. Originally from the UK, Joanna emigrated to Canada in 2006 and settled in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she makes her home. Find her online at www.joannalilley.com.
Excerpt
Beauty
There's a rumour about beauty,
its long whiskers and golden eyes,
its stripes as dark
as the moon shadows of trees.
There's a rumour that the forest
took the beauty,
that the people who took
the forest took the beauty.
The beauty's stripes tightened,
sliced right through--the people
said they had nothing to do with it.
The whiskers caught fire
and the golden eyes burned
right through.
--Javan tiger
Awards
- Planet in Peril Poetry Competition 2019, Winner
Reviews
We are so disconnected from nature we think it's the economy that makes our lifestyles and lives possible. In fact it's the complex web of nature within which we are inextricably linked and on which we are utterly dependent. When a species disappears, that complex web of life loses resilience and productivity. Endlings is a reminder of what we have lost within human memory. It's a frightening reminder that Nature is our Mother and source of life. --David Suzuki
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