in this country of noise I learn to speak fast we turn to wist & salt & gain points because the salt is white I am bright but less than fluent in questioning borders in my mother tongue my only country twelve hundred points a hole dark with want for my father’s head where language breaks in fractions & then as we shrink breaks us
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Excerpted from Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi. © 2024 Chimwemwe Undi. Published by House of Anansi Press www.houseofanansi.com
Imalka Nilmalgoda
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. Her debut collection, Scientific Marvel, received the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry. She is Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
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.
"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
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