This collection is an announcement, an announcement from the crossroads, from the crosscurrents, from the multiple paths of writing and thinking, of feeling being and existence. It extends the self in all directions so that that very self can exit the chains of the individual ego and feel the larger Being that exists outside ... It is between poetry, chronicle, existential and transcendental meditation. Yet it might be none of those but only words upon words, incantations upon incantations, which will lead through the many spheres of life, the rings that constitute us and which cannot be fully contained in words “so powerful is their force and grand their desire to exit this smallness of us, or the ego we suffer under.

Irene Marques is a bilingual writer (English and Portuguese) and Lecturer at Ryerson University in the English Department, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, a Masters in French Literature and Comparative Literature and a BA (Hon.) in French Language and Literature all from the University of Toronto?and a Bachelor of Social Work from Ryerson University. Her literary publications include the poetry collections Wearing Glasses of Water (2007), The Perfect Unravelling of the Spirit (2012), and The Circular Incantation: An Exercise in Loss and Findings (2013); the Portuguese language short-story collection Habitando na Metáfora do Tempo: Crónicas Desejadas (2009) and the novel My House is a Mansion (2015). Her academic publications include, among others, the manuscript Transnational Discourses on Class, Gender and Cultural Identity, and numerous articles in international journals or scholarly collectives, including African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture and Society; Research in African Literatures; A Companion to Mia Couto; Letras & Letras; InterDISCIPLINARY: Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies; African Studies; and Portuguese Studies Review. Her Portuguese-language novel, Uma Casa no Mundo, won the 2019 Imprensa Nacional/Ferreira de Castro Prize and is now published by Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda. She lives in Toronto. www.irenemarques.net

Irene Marques' profile page

Call this fat poetry, not thin. At its best it reminds me of the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: everything writ large and interconnected. Marques continually welcomes us into her world with poetic leis and figurative dances “Marques has a clear ability to turn a poem and make it her own. “Arc: Canada's National Poetry Magazine