“Land of the Sky delivers poetry that is moving, transporting, and transcendent. A citizen of the globe, Salimah Valiani has no time for the pedestrian and no room for the commonplace. She recognizes that “things are similar and different simultaneously”: “What’s wrong with choosing the strange?” In Land of the Sky, Valiani connects Canada, Tanzania, and Uganda; Ismaili, Ishnashari, and Buddhist; Anishnabek Cree, Chinese, and Luganda; Chez Rodin and Plante Bath; snow and savannah; astronomy that’s based on criminal justice forensics. For Valiani, “The first crime is alienation,” and so she savours the world– exotic menus and mountain gorillas, public transit workers and women dancers– and each moment’s “eminence / decadence.” This book is the result of the poet’s “fragmenting my life / into more new places.” Why? “How many times can a heart be broken?” The resolve? “it takes pain / to feel free.”
— George Elliott Clarke, Parliamentary (Canadian) Poet Laureate (2016-2018)