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.”
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.”
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 4, 2023 |
| Specifications | 104 pages | 6 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | national poetry month; junebat; john elizabeth stintzi; kayla czaga; dunk tank; museum of bone and water; nicole brossard; gender; environment; canadian literature; creative writing; activism; social justice; poetry collectors; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
JEN CURRIN is the author of seven books, including Hider/Seeker: Stories, which won a Canadian Independent Book Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book, and The Inquisition Yours, which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award and was a Lambda finalist. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, on the traditional territories of the Multnomah, Chinook, Clackamas, and other tribes, Currin studied with Martín Espada and John Ashbery before moving to Canada in 2002. They live in New Westminster, BC, on unceded Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, and Musqueam territories and teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. |
| Written By |
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JEN CURRIN is the author of seven books, including Hider/Seeker: Stories, which won a Canadian Independent Book Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book, and The Inquisition Yours, which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award and was a Lambda finalist. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, on the traditional territories of the Multnomah, Chinook, Clackamas, and other tribes, Currin studied with Martín Espada and John Ashbery before moving to Canada in 2002. They live in New Westminster, BC, on unceded Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, and Musqueam territories and teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. |
Long-listed, SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors, 2023
"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
” —Canthius"Elegant and melodious poems … From transit rides to office tasks, Currin brews heady substance from quotidian routines." — Vancouver Sun
” —Vancouver Sun"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
” —SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors Judge"I delight in Jen Currin's poetry, and “delight” is the right word, because this kind of vociferous intelligence coupled with such musical sense of wordplay give(s) pure pleasure. It is wordplay because it romps and leaps within the form of the poem, the lines buck like animals. Throughout all of their books, and especially in this new one, Currin’s sense of language is sure and wild, wild and sure." — Kazim Ali, author of Inquisition
” —Kazim Ali, author of Inquisition"Set against the moody wetness of the Pacific Northwest through its perambulations from Vancouver to Portland and back again, these poems contemplate the moon; a predatory State in collusion with “Princes of Melting Icecaps;” the often-unseen intimacy between architecture and animals; intergenerational trauma; dying salmon and structural dystopia; and conclude with what must be paramount in our minds in the present ecological crises: water and healing." — Mercedes Eng, author of Prison Industrial Complex Explodes
” —Mercedes Eng, author of Prison Industrial Complex Explodes