Marked by rhythmic drive, humour, and surprise, Undi’s poems consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Firmly grounded in the local, the arresting poems in Chimwemwe Undi’s debut collection, Scientific Marvel, are preoccupied with Winnipeg in the way a Winnipegger is preoccupied with Winnipeg, the way a poet might be preoccupied with herself: through history and immigration; race and gender; anxieties and observation. Marked by rhythmic drive, humour and surprise, Undi’s poems consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the west. Taking its title from a beauty school in downtown Winnipeg that closed in 2017 after nearly 100 years of operation, Scientific Marvel approaches the prairies from the point of view of a person who is often erased from the prairies’ idea of itself. “I mean my country the way / my country means my country / and what else is there to say? / I am bad and brown / and trying. Nothing here / belongs to me or could / or ever will.”
This is poetry that touches on challenging topics—from queerness and colonialism to racism, climate rage, and decolonization, while never straying far from specific lived experience, the so-called ‘smaller’ questions: about self, art, dance parties and pop culture, relationships and love.
Marked by rhythmic drive, humour, and surprise, Undi’s poems consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Firmly grounded in the local, the arresting poems in Chimwemwe Undi’s debut collection, Scientific Marvel, are preoccupied with Winnipeg in the way a Winnipegger is preoccupied with Winnipeg, the way a poet might be preoccupied with herself: through history and immigration; race and gender; anxieties and observation. Marked by rhythmic drive, humour and surprise, Undi’s poems consider what is left out from the history and ongoing realities of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the west. Taking its title from a beauty school in downtown Winnipeg that closed in 2017 after nearly 100 years of operation, Scientific Marvel approaches the prairies from the point of view of a person who is often erased from the prairies’ idea of itself. “I mean my country the way / my country means my country / and what else is there to say? / I am bad and brown / and trying. Nothing here / belongs to me or could / or ever will.”
This is poetry that touches on challenging topics—from queerness and colonialism to racism, climate rage, and decolonization, while never straying far from specific lived experience, the so-called ‘smaller’ questions: about self, art, dance parties and pop culture, relationships and love.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 2, 2024 |
| Specifications | 96 pages | 6 in x 8 in |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
CHIMWEMWE UNDI is a poet, editor, and lawyer living and writing on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work has appeared in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World, among others. She was the recipient of the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards, and she is the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. |
| Written By |
|
CHIMWEMWE UNDI is a poet, editor, and lawyer living and writing on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work has appeared in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World, among others. She was the recipient of the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards, and she is the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. |
Bound together and each piece so very much its own, this collection marvels from masterful found poems to sprinkles of pure love and humour. Undi electrifies, is at once vulnerable and completely indestructible. PS: That first Winnipeg poem has got to be our new hometown anthem.
” —Katherena Vermette, author of The BreakScientific Marvel is poetic anti-gravity. Poetry of the lightest touch for the heftiest matters. And so lit by its poet’s willingness to tarry with the things only poetry can illuminate, its music blooms with defiant wit. Sharp, pointed, and sage about the world and its endangered moving parts, the great reward of Undi’s meticulous attention is ours to reap, whether it is trained close to home or beyond. But even more, Undi has proven herself an exquisite and needful diarist of the inextricability of Black being from love, from freedom, from the tangled, hurtful web of this modern life. At the core of this book is always the heart-stirring necessity of surprise. A queerly marvelous debut!
” —Canisia Lubrin, author of Code NoirWith searing wit, a tender hand, and a bird’s eye, Scientific Marvel delivers a smirk behind each word as alluring as it is intelligent. Melding the personal and the political, Undi’s poems understand Winnipeg streets as well as they know Supreme Court jurisprudence. High school crushes mingle with the evolution of birds—apologies with freedom—in a voice that represents both an astounding and curious achievement. ‘I am learning about property/in a recent nation where no one looks me in the eye,’ she writes. ‘I wanted something/too, to survive,/besides my good name.’ Scientific Marvel is a fight song for anyone in love with their broken city—its strange stores—and our dying earth, its betrayal and beauty. All of it, Undi demonstrates, worth noticing, worth cherishing, worth remembering.
” —Sanna Wani, author of My Grief, the Sun