Hagiography

I step into the garment buildings,
a grammar dove under my arm,
a rustle in the back of my spirit.
Seaweed dresses sway on their hangers.
My voice frills as I call
to the chicken who knows
the way up the mountain.

Jen Currin’s acclaimed debut collection, The Sleep of Four Cities, announced the arrival of a fully formed, arresting new talent, and the poems in her new collection, Hagiography, see her trademark wordplay and entirely contemporary take on the surrealist image moving into new territory. These poems push life’s barely hidden strangeness into the light, and present thought as a bright, emotionally complex event. In Hagiography, mind and sense and the world they move through are interwoven to create a mysterious, familiar, vexing and continuously fascinating human drama.

There are no saints in Hagiography, but there are many curious characters looking for spiritual truth. Hagiography is populated by seekers: ghosts, spiders, sisters, pilgrims, children, tigers, therapists, witches, grandfathers and birds. Hagiography starts with death and ends with birth. In between, life after life.

‘Hagiography is a delight for the reader’s heart and mind – hagios, meaning sacred, plus graphein, to write. One lovely poem after another guides us through what holds us like a light.’ – Robin Blaser

‘Currin’s language is not so much surreal as it is devoted to the strangeness of what really happens to bodies and selves in the world … this book is a conversion narrative … it is a story of how we believe language can change and how we believe change can speak.’ – Aaron McCollough, author of Little Ease and Double Venus

Also available as a digital eBook.

The Inquisition Yours

In her ambitious follow-up to Hagiography, acclaimed poet Jen Currin continues her unique exploration of the surrealist lyric, constructing a strong case that, in these frightening times, it may be the best poetic mode for capturing the complexities of lived experience. In tongues alternately vulnerable, defiant, resigned, and hopeful, The Inquisition Yours speaks to the atrocities of our time – war, environmental destruction, terrorism, cancer, and the erosion of personal rights – fashioning a tenuous bridge between the political and the personal. Trying to make sense of a world where even language is ‘a danger,’ Currin’s poems reject the old storylines in favour of a vigilant awareness, and wonder what might happen if we ‘change the feared penmanship’ and embrace a narrative that empowers everyone.

Also available as a digital eBook.

Shortlisted for the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (B.C. Book Prizes), the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, and the Audre Lorde Poetry Award.

The Sleep of Four Cities

Powered by lush imagery and lyricism, the poems in The Sleep of Four Cities use the city as a metaphor for the complexity of self. This book invites the reader to take a journey through multiple cities—cities of memory, of desire, of imagination, of discovery, of loss—with only the map of language as a guide. The cities in this book are not always easily unlocked—they are at once tangible and invisible; they exist both inside and outside the speakers of the poems. Throughout the book, these speakers seek to discover what is within their grasp and what, like water, will slip through their fingers.

Reviews

The Star Reviews Jen Currin’s Hagiography

Book reviews: Poetry by Dionne Brand, Jen Currin, Larissa Lai, and Susan Holbrook

Queer Cross-Border Pollination

WHEN: August 3, 2011 at 7:30pm
WHERE: Roundhouse Exhibition Hall
181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver

Readers: John Barton, Elizabeth Colen, Jen Currin, Carol Guess, Lydia Kwa and Wayne Koestembaum.

Reading at Twisted Poets

WHEN: Oct. 20th, 2011 at 7pm
WHERE: The Prophouse Cafe
1636 Venables Streetm Vancouver, BC

Readers: Jen Currin and Lisa McInnes

Poetic Justice

WHEN: November 6, 2011 from 3-5pm
WHERE: The Heritage Grill
447 Columbia St, New Westminster

READERS: Jen Currin and a fantastic open-mic.

Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference

WHEN: October 20th, 2011 from 11-noon
WHERE: Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

READERS: Jen Currin, Rachel Rose and Miranda Pearson,

People’s Co-op Bookstore

WHEN: August 19, 2011 from 8-9pm
WHERE: People’s Co-op Bookstore
1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver

READERS: Jen Currin and a surprise guest

Main Street Literary Tour

WHEN: August 18, 2011 at 7:30
WHERE: Blim
115 E. Pender Street, Vancouver

READERS: Jen Currin, Gillian Jerome, Donato Mancini and Jeff Stautz.