Winner, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Winner, League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award
Finalist, League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
CBC Best Book of 2024
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.
Winner, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Winner, League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award
Finalist, League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
CBC Best Book of 2024
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. |
Winner, Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, 2024
Winner, League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award, 2025
Short-listed, League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, 2025
Commended, CBC Best Book of 2024, 2024
Commended, CBC Best Poetry of 2024, 2024
"Incisive and precise, tender and loving, these poems escort readers through questions of race and place, disappeared histories, immigration, gender and climate angst … A captivating debut, Scientific Marvel transforms through tough lessons and uplifts through lively language play — and, of course, love." — Toronto Star
” —“Politically astute, rigorously loving, lyrically deft debut collection.” — Herizons
” —“What is remarkable about Scientific Marvel is the way Undi seamlessly creates threads between Winnipeg landmarks and girlhood, legal cases and love, grammar, and ancestry … Her poetic voice remains distinct, strong, and memorable.” — Room Magazine
” —“Expansive in form and subject, precise in language and image, Scientific Marvel … hums cover to cover.” — EVENT
” —“Throughout Scientific Marvel, Undi trusts the reader to meet her in ambiguity and confront the limits of both legal reasoning and poetic expression.” — Prairie Fire
” —“Scientific Marvel is intelligent and incisive … perceptive and vulnerable.” — The Miramichi Reader
” —“Undi’s is undeniably a poetry of place and is augmented through a deep understanding of context.” — Border Crossings Magazine
” —"Scientific Marvel is poetic anti-gravity. Poetry of the lightest touch for the heftiest matters … 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 … A queerly marvelous debut!" — Canisia Lubrin, author of Code Noir
” —Katherena Vermette, author of The Break"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 Break
” —Canisia Lubrin, author of Code Noir"With 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
” —Sanna Wani, author of My Grief, the Sun