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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 is the author of the poetry collections Leaving Howe Island and The Outer Wards. Her work has won the CBC Poetry Prize and Arc's Poem of the Year Contest, and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. 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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