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The Outer Wards, Sadiqa de Meijer’s new collection, explores questions of maternal love and duty—and the powerlessness that comes with the disruption of that role through illness. “I was awake. / The hour was wrong,” de Meijer writes, and her poems track, in visceral ... Read more
The Outer Wards, Sadiqa de Meijer’s new collection, explores questions of maternal love and duty—and the powerlessness that comes with the disruption of that role through illness. “I was awake. / The hour was wrong,” de Meijer writes, and her poems track, in visceral and tender detail, the distraction, exhaustion, exhilaration, and fear of child-rearing through crisis. For de Meijer, the experience was also a crisis of language, and the struggle to find new terms for her state. Addressed, in part, to a child she calls “my grievous spectacle, / my dearest unpossessable,” The Outer Wards is everywhere marked by a joy in words—their quick-fire turns, sumptuous sounds, and nursery-rhyme seductions.
Sadiqa de Meijer’s debut collection, Leaving Howe Island, was a nominee for the 2014 Governor General's Award for English-language poetry and for the 2014 Pat Lowther Award. Her most recent book is TK, published with Palimpsest Press in 2020. She lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
"A voice of authority and grace. "--Michael Crummey
"Sadiqa's poetry is taut, spare, incredibly evocative. ..and unerringly sharp"--Wayne Grady
"[De Meijer's] attention to detail creates dynamic pieces. "--Canadian Literature
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This week we continued our penultimate week of NPM celebrations with more author interviews and poems, and quietly (and unrelatedly) wondered to ourselves "why does anyone make bread when they can buy it?" (We get why, ps).
Sadiqa de Meijer takes on the ALU DiscoverVerse today to discuss her book The Outer Wards (Véhicule Press), a collection about maternal love and duty and finding new frontiers of language to convey sense of powerlessness as a mother facing illness. Sadiqa shares more with ... Read more
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