On the day when my used-to-be countrymenvoted to throw their country away, and theirchildren and grandchildren away, I didwhat I could, which was picking up sticks,grooming the long hooves of the forest whose life they have shortened by half.On the day when they voted to roll upthe map and burn up the calendar, votedto spend all that remains of the earth’sendowment right now on themselves,I thought I should cry, but I’d run out of handkerchiefs, run out of tears.On the day when there was nothing I could do,I did pretty much nothing and hopedfor the best. Although the best in these conditionsmay not be very different from the worst.Not different at all, in the end, except we’d have seen it a bit farther off.
The Day After Tuesday
7 November 2024
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“The Day After Tuesday” from ON OCCASION: POEMS FOR THE PEOPLE: by Robert Bringhurst.
Published by Coach House Books on May 12, 2026.
Copyright © 2026 by Robert Bringhurst.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
“The Day After Tuesday” from COLLECTED POEMS: (forthcoming) by Robert Bringhurst.
Published by Harbour Publishing on October 06, 2026.
Copyright © 2026 by Robert Bringhurst.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Robert Bringhurst is one of Canada’s most celebrated poets. He was born in California in 1946, moved with his family to Alberta in 1952, and has lived most of his adult life in the remoter parts of the British Columbia coast. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Witter Bynner Fellow in Poetry at the Library of Congress, a Phillips Fund Fellow at the American Philosophical Society, a writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh, and the winner of the prestigious Edward Sapir Prize in Native American linguistics. He is widely known both for his work as a scholar and translator of Native American oral literatures (Haida, Cree, Navajo) and as a historian and practitioner of the fine art of typography. Copper Canyon has published three of his many books of poetry: The Beauty of the Weapons (1985), Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music (1987), and Selected Poems (2011).
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
On Occasion is a collection rooted in the tradition of the poem as an act of love, an act of protest, an act of visionary incantation, of remembrance, of a call to arms, and a much-needed balm.
The traditional ‘occasional poem’ has a bad rap: a tedious rhyming poem at a wedding or a dreary verse at a funeral. This is not that. These are poems for a tumultuous and complicated world, for occasions that may be celebrations or mournings, or anything in between; from life cycles, to earth cycles, to social cycles, editor Sina Queyras brings together a collection of poetry that speaks to moments of upheaval, revolution, and challenge. Poetry that people can turn to.
[The collection] contains over a hundred poems for different occasions, including writing by Suzanne Buffam, Heather Christle, CAConrad, Sue Goyette, Canisia Lubrin, bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, Lisa Robertson, Sue Sinclair, and A. E. Stallings.
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