A beautiful re-issued edition of poetry from the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of How To Pronounce Knife


FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

“In 1978, my parents lived in building #48. Nong Khai, Thailand, a Lao refugee camp. My father kept a scrapbook filled with doodles, addresses, postage stamps, maps, measurements. He threw it out and when he did, I took it and found this.”

Built out of doodles, diagrams, and drawings, this is a work characterized by the elegance and power of its bareness. These poems use blank spaces and small print. Their language is exquisitely precise in detail, and every letter, gesture, break, line, and shape becomes a place of real meaning. Here, the intention is to let us see, as well as to hold back much of what we see.

First published in 2007, Souvankham Thammavongsa's remarkable second collection was acclaimed for its originality and cemented her reputation as a poet with a rare, astonishing gift.

Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in Nong Khai, Thailand, in 1978 and was raised and educated in Toronto. She won the 2004 ReLit prize for her first poetry book, Small Arguments. She is also the author of a second poetry book, Found, which was made into a short film and screened at film festivals worldwide, including Toronto International Film Festival and Dok Leipzig. Some of her poems were written while she was a resident at Yaddo. Poems have appeared in many of Canada’s literary journals and magazines, including Canadian Literature, Contemporary Verse 2, dANDelion, Event, The Fiddlehead and The Windsor Review. The poem “The Sun in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away” appeared in the anthology Troubling Borders: Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora published by the University of Washington Press in the United States. The poem “Perfect” was nominated for a National Magazine award. Thammavongsa was named one of “Best Under 35” writers in Canada in a special issue of The Windsor Review. She lives in Stouffville, Ontario.

Souvankham Thammavongsa's profile page

Praise for Souvankham Thammavongsa and Found:

“One of the most striking voices to emerge in Canadian poetry in a generation.” —The Walrus