Floating is Everything

Sheryda Warrener’s second poetry collection touches on the illusion of remaining grounded and a sense of belonging. A retired cosmonaut returns from a record-breaking 438 days in space and attempts to re-immerse himself in the world. One speaker considers reinvention from the top floor of the World’s Tallest building; another, our complicated future from Reykjavik, post-eruption of Eyjafjallajï¿½kull. Confessions and aspirations suspend in air. Ghosts float in and out; inheritance and connection are called into question. Morrissey, Cindy Sherman, and Pancho Barnes make cameo appearances. Influence and personal lineage are traced back to the Vikings, demoted Pluto, artists frequenting a Parisian bar. One speaker confides: “Yes, she’s longing to be elsewhere. Just past the sun deck there’s something invisible worth having.” In Floating is Everything, a resolution lies nearly always out of reach.

AUTHOR

Sheryda Warrener

Sheryda Warrener is the author of the poetry collections Hard Feelings (Snare, 2010) and Floating is Everything (Nightwood, 2015). Her work can be found in Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Hazlitt, and The Believer, among other literary journals. She is a recipient of The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry, and recent poems have been selected for Best Canadian Poetry, The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry, and the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize longlist. Sheryda lives in Vancouver BC with her son and partner, and teaches poetry and interdisciplinary forms in the School of Creative Writing at UBC.