Into the Continent: 14 (Oskana Poetry & Poetics) - Softcover

McGiffin, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889779899 ISBN 13: 9780889779891

Publisher: University of Regina Press, 2024

Synopsis

Emily McGiffin’s poems examine imperial violence and colonialism in South Africa and Canada.

Multifaceted and multi-voiced, Emily McGiffin’s poems explore the ongoing violence, destruction, and loss wrought by colonialism and capitalist extraction across time and geographic space, from Turtle Island to South Africa. McGiffin animates the spectres that haunt our private and public pasts. Her words remind us that we live in a world shaped by the events and people of the past, by suffering, and seizure, yet at times in the shadow of great acts of generosity. This world, largely built by iterations of violence, still concentrates wealth into the hands of a few, and McGiffin reminds us that power wants to hold its grip, to reproduce itself.

my body an ark
carrying successors like a chambered nautilus

what i was placed here to do
ferry the unborn
across the inhospitable land
make a bed amid the thornbush
make a tea table, forge the domestic
bliss of my country
raise them as heirs
draw our lineage in the sand

About this title

About the Author

Emily McGiffin was born on Tla-o-qui-aht territory (in Tofino, British Columbia) and raised on the lands of the Ts'uubaa-asatx and Quw'utsun Nations (in Vancouver Island's Cowichan Valley). She is currently a Research Fellow at University College London. McGiffin is the author of Between Dusk and Night and Of Land, Bones, and Money: Toward a South African Ecopoetics.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889779899
• ISBN 13: 9780889779891
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80