Heartsick, reverent, irreverent, and quietly political, Trinity Street is the much-anticipated fifth collection from poet Jen Currin, winner of the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda finalist.

While Trinity Street is in fact an actual street in Vancouver, it is also the site of an imaginary garden and imperfect utopia in the title poem of this new collection. Currin’s poems weave together the meditative and the disruptive, the queer and quotidian, and the worlds of the dead and the living. Connections are made through prayer and protest; friendships are forged on a planet challenged by climate crisis, collective grief, and the perils of late capitalism.

These poems vibrate with unexpected shifts and precise, startling imagery, the touchstones of a poet whose work critics have described as “thrilling,” “emotionally evocative,” and “revelatory.”

Poems by Jen Currin have appeared in numerous North American journals, including: The Fiddlehead, Mudfish, The Massachusetts Review, Diner, subTerrain, The Mississippi Review, and Washington Square. In 2002, Mark Levine awarded her second place in River City's annual poetry contest. Her chapbook Ten Poems/Eleven Years was published by Breeds Like A Rumrunner (Vancouver, 2004). Her most recent collection, Hagiography, won Winnow Press's 2005 Open Book Award. A graduate of Bard College and Arizona State University's MFA program, Jen currently teaches creative writing at the Vancouver Film School and for Langara College's Continuing Education program. While at ASU, she served as both assistant editor and poetry editor of Hayden's Ferry Review from 1999-2002. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Jen currently lives in Vancouver, BC, where she is a member of the poetry collective vertigo west.

Jen Currin's profile page

• Long-listed, SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors

Oh, the sensitive, careful language, each word picked full of colour and taste. I want to eat it. I want to sing it.

SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors Judge

Wry, shrewd, and brassy … What Currin is after as a poet and in poetry is beyond an either/or premise. … Moving and discovering poems.

Canthius

Elegant and melodious poems … From transit rides to office tasks, Currin brews heady substance from quotidian routines.

Vancouver Sun