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The lion stretched like a sandstone lion on a sandstone slab
of a bridge with one fixture, a gaslight,
looks up from his nicotine-worried forepaw
with the very same air my father, Patrick,
had when the results came back from the lab, that air of anguish-awe
that comes with the realization of just how slight
the chances are of anything doing the trick

as the sun goes down over Ballyknick and Ballymacnab
and a black-winged angel takes flight.

The black-winged angel leaning over the sandstone parapet
of the bridge wears a business suit, dark gray. His hair is slick with pomade.
He turns away as my mother, Brigid,
turned away from not only her sandstone pet
but any concession being made.
The black-winged angel sets her face to the unbending last ray
of evening and meets rigid with rigid

as the sun goes down over Lisnagat and Listamlet
and Clonmore and Clintyclay.

Feckless as he was feckless, as likely as her to be in a foofaraw,
I have it in me to absolutely rant and rail while, for fear of the backlash,
absolutely renounce
the idea of holding anything that might be construed as an opinion.
The lion still looks back to his raw
knuckle and sighs for the possibility that an ounce
of Walnut Plug might shape up from the ash
The angel still threatens to abandon us with a single flick of her pinion

as the sun goes down over Lislasly and Lissaraw
and Derrytrasna and Derrymacash.

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week is “Homesickness” from Paul Muldoon’s 2003 Griffin-winning collection, Moy sand and gravel, which also won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry that year.

Of the collection, the judges said: “Reading Paul Muldoon’s poetry is like looking through a kaleidoscope while he jiggles your elbow. The complex rhyme-schemes, the repeated words and phrases, the refrains, the wonderful patterning unexpectedly dislocate this poet’s deep sense of place and shuttle the reader between order and chaos and back again. He reminds us that rhyme used with great resource does not restrain: rather, it is aleatory; it beckons the random and the risky.”

Muldoon's fourteenth book of poetry, Howdie-Skelp, is out this November with Faber & Faber in the U.K. and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the U.S.

Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney recently collaborated on a two-volume book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, which illuminates the stories behind 154 of McCartney’s song lyrics — “as close to an autobiography as we may ever come,” said Muldoon.

Oh, how she read this. Girl
beloved daughter of daughters
blood, kin, and kind

sagacious grammarian
post-fly phoneticist

every syllable she say be sapphires

Oh, how she read that Girl
beloved daughter of daughters
blood, kin, and kind

sassy semiotician
post-def decoder

every book she crack parts oceans,
sends waves rushing back to their shores

every page she turn sets free a caged bird,
whose wings are spread and ready for flight

Oh, how she read, this Girl
beloved daughter of daughters
blood, kin, and kind,

post-dope dissenter
mos-bomb seditionist

every word she speak be a teeth-sucking act of resistance

every word she write be a battle cry

every tap of her pen be the beat of an ancestor’s drum

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week is from How She Read by 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian shortlisted poet, Chantal Gibson.

Of the collection, the judges said: “Chantal Gibson invites scrutiny of where language maps, or fails to map, the quiddity of the world. Here the English language carries and transmits the burden of its service to the imperial ‘adventure’, in schoolbooks, in literature, in historical artifacts and through image and portraiture in paint and photograph. Her interanimation of the visual and the verbal energises a private mark-making, a resistance poetry to the coded, at times subliminal, oppressions of history. To detox the soul then, to be free and creative as citizens, we deserve to read each mark with schooled attention. And trust in our own mark making, our right to speak it the way we see it. This is a fabulous primer, ludic and ferocious, in the grand tradition of liberation handbooks.”

We also invite you to check out Gibson’s new book With/holding, now out with Caitlin Press here!

I pull off I’s toes and leaves them near the sea, I’s sea,
back to the sea as before, yet an hour’s drift from
Manzanilla, which is no place but a word I loves,

I knows what begins the act of saying things, what is lodged there
a promise of some life, not unlike this coal-grey sky, not unlike
the not-good marching band a street away throwing madness

out with I’s lonely discography, I says “please,” without toes
but what about these feet now that they are not ceased
in their act of making things, disappeared things

things given over to the gesture, the method, to the field
awash and undertow, what is love but the hand returning
to claim the dust red, white, black as a coal-swept evening

Notes on the Poem
Our Poem of the Week is from The Dyzgraphxst by our 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian winner, Canisia Lubrin. Lubrin was also recently featured in Fiery Sparks of Light, an augmented reality poetry experience spotlighting Canadian women poets presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Canada was the guest of honour this year.

Click here to learn more about Fiery Sparks of Light and watch this video to see how the holograms work! Produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Fiery Sparks of Light is a Canadian Film Centre / CFC Media Lab and York University Immersive Storytelling Lab co-production, in partnership with The Griffin Trust for Excellence In Poetry, and supported by OCAD University.