I trusted
the women. I asked them to send me poems that mattered to them, with no more
specific theme, believing in the narrative that would come.
In this
issue of G U E S T, you will find an
airing out, a giving over to water, and longings for escape. You'll read about
endurance, about the way the body holds violence, about the strangeness of the
future, and about the hope in the smallest of things. Inside are transformations
of trauma and the rewriting of the self, the sharing of wisdom, and the
managing of the sorrows that follow us. You'll read about the many shapes of
home. Here are women reinvigorating the words of other women, glosa style.
Women dedicating poems to each other. Women choosing.
As I was
reading the works they chose to send to me, and choosing amongst them, I noted
how many of the authors relied on water, or its absence, to discuss
survival. Shery Alexander Heinis talks
of the necessary immersion of our bodies into water, which contains both life
and death. Anita Dolman's [in Huron
County] coats us in so much dust, rust, and closeness, we crave the
freshness of water while we crave escape. As we dig deep into the poems, we see
Natalee Caple eulogize Canadian Poet Pat Lowther, brutally murdered and
discovered in water, through a tight rewriting of Lowther's own History Lessons that speaks across time.
At the close of the issue, Barâa Arar speaks to us of all that is ungraspable
in the ocean of "home." Their concepts of water move from that which
lives the tiniest of places - the breath - to that which lives in the sublime -
the clouds.
Below I
have found and bound one line from each of the poems of the thirteen women in this
issue (and one extra from Alexander Heinis's for the title). This is for the authors
of this issue and for all of the water women, the rain speakers, the washing
women, the tide-ruled, lake-dwelling,
the creek-cradled, unmoored women. This is for those turned to ice, who resist
fire, who are cloud-bound. For the ones clinking the ice in their drinks. For
the ocean-tossed and tired.
– natalie hanna
water: a
body
our mouths all grotto
alive
with dead bodies & bones
the memories of foundry dust thicken –
breath exhausts
all
her teeth carving coal
when i woke up, i was past something
looking at it, i struggle to keep my balance
without the careful curation of answers
the
difficulty lies in staying in character
your
images rise, collide with my mind
she
recounts her encounter:
there was so much
that needed to be unpacked
but you
have to believe the water will return to you
natalie hanna runs
battleaxepress press, a small poetry press, since 2016. she is an Ottawa lawyer
working with low income populations. Her writing focusses on feminist, political,
and personal themes. She was a past Administrative Director of the Sawdust
Reading Series and past board member of Arc Poetry Magazine (2016-2018). She is
the author of ten chapbooks, including three with above/ground press, with an
11th forthcoming from Baseline Press in the Fall of 2020. Her poetry,
interviews and commentary have appeared in print and online in Canada and the
U.S. Her poem “light conversation” received Honourable Mention in ARC
Magazine’s 2019 – Diana Brebner Prize. For more information, find her at the
battleaxepress web site: https://nhannawriting.wordpress.com
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