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Ash on an old man’s sleeve Is all the ash the burnt roses leave. Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended. — T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” To my father Scientists are measuring the dust on the moon—scant evidence of what ought to be impossible.…
Gavin Barrett’s poetry collection Understan takes the reader on a beautiful kaleidoscopic journey from Goa, India, throughout the various places he has lived, including Toronto and environs. The poems sojourn with his enduring love for his wife and his love for humanity. The poems in this multifaceted collection celebrate and satirize through lush description. Understan manifests Barrett’s multiple influences from T.S. Eliot to Arun Kolatkar in poems inspired by family, faith (Catholicism), racism, and social injustice. Barrett is the founder and co-curator of the east-end Toronto-based...
Brandon Wint’s collection, Divine Animal, showcases his facility with words. Like the work of spoken word artists such as Toronto’s Andrea Thompson, his poetry sings on paper. Divine Animal is rich with anger, mourning, yearning, celebration, sensuality, and hope. The collection is also a timely and important reflection on the origins of systemic racism and long-time police brutality against Black people in the Western world. In his prelude to Divine Animal, “Incantation: Memory of Water,” Wint’s narrator considers the history of his Jamaican and Barbadian ancestors. Wint’s epi...