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Poetry Canadian

Quiet Night Think

Poems & SzeEssays

by (author) Gillian Sze

Publisher
ECW Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2022
Category
Canadian, Women Authors, Essays
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781770416253
    Publish Date
    Apr 2022
    List Price
    $21.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781773059259
    Publish Date
    Apr 2022
    List Price
    $13.99

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Description

 

Quiet Night Think is a stunning work.” — Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“One function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time,” writes Wallace Stevens. In Quiet Night Think, award-winning poet Gillian Sze expresses her own definition.

During the remarkable period of early parenthood, Sze’s new maternal role urges her to contemplate her own origins, both familial and artistic. Comprised of six personal essays, poems, and a concluding long poem, Quiet Night Think takes its title from a direct translation of an eighth-century Chinese poem by Li Bai, the subject of the opening essay. Sze’s memory of reading Li Bai’s poem as a child marks the beginning of an unshakable encounter with poetry. What follows is an intimate anatomization of her particular entanglement with languages and cultures.

In her most generically diverse book yet, Sze moves between poetry and prose, mother and writer, the lyrical and the autobiographical, all the while inviting readers to meditate with her on questions of emergence and transformation: What are you trying to be? Where does a word break off? What calls to us throughout the night?

 

About the author

Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections, including Peeling Rambutan, Redrafting Winer and Panicle. Her work has been nominated for the QWF’s A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. She studied creative writing and English literature at Concordia University and received a PhD in études anglaises from the Université de Montréal. Originally from Winnipeg, she now resides in Montreal, where she teaches creative writing. The Night Is Deep and Wide is her first board book and was inspired by her son who was a challenging sleeper as a baby.

 

Gillian Sze's profile page

Excerpt: Quiet Night Think: Poems & SzeEssays (by (author) Gillian Sze)

 

Fauna

 

Somewhere
it unravels,
lands furled upon moss,

snagged in the spider’s web,
or sits dewed upon long blades of morning.

It breaks dormancy
roots and shoots
to meet tinselled cheeps
and the uncertain step of a fawn.

At each point

where cygnets touch nest, touch water,
or horns graze birch and brush,

is a whisper that flits forward,
glow upon glow,
affirming what’s buried beneath.

No one tells you
that the ark was made of light
each cubit knotted and dazzled

and while the world was daring to die
from each icicle and sprig

they came, two and two,
in them the breath of light.

 

Editorial Reviews

 

Quiet Night Think is a stunning work. Gillian Sze has ‘the acrobatic ear’ and a generous mind. To be a mother, a daughter, a writer, a self — through reflection and poetry, essay and remembrance, these fragile threads carry one another in profound, transporting ways. I know I will return to this extraordinary book again and again.” — Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

“Sze draws on emotion-imbued imagery from nature, daily observations and intellectual investigations, punctuated by intimate, often heartrending glimmers that captivate all the way to the book’s end.” — Montreal Review of Books

“Sze’s meditations are delicate, thoughtful and raw, articulating the complex experiences and emotions around new motherhood.” — Rob Mclennan’s blog

Quiet Night Think by Gillian Sze is a collection of finely observed poems and invitingly associative essays, in which Sze muses on language, translation, and individual words.” — Poetry Foundation

 

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