Above, the Geese
Watch as winter’s footman scurries off,the winged spring melt rushing beneath long plates of ice.Look at the waterpregnant with twigs and lost coins.Where the trunk meets the ground—this snow is the first to go.A tree carries its warmth through the winter,each one a point de capitonaround which footprints stitch themselves.For an instant—all is convincedbefore moonlight kneels, as it does,to cast each day away.
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- May 27, 2022
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“Above, the Geese” from QUIET NIGHT THINK: POEMS & ESSAYS by Gillian Sze.
Published by ECW Press in April 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Gillian Sze.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Nadia Zheng
Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections. Her poetry has been nominated for the QWF’s A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry, as well as received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. Gillian has also published two picture books, including The Night Is Deep and Wide, which was listed as one of the Best Books for Kids in 2021 by the New York Public Library. Her work has attained starred reviews from Quill & Quire, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews and has been translated into Slovenian, French, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Greek. Gillian studied Creative Writing and English Literature and received a Ph.D. in Études anglaises from Université de Montréal. Her latest collection of poems and essays, Quiet Night Think, explores the early shaping of a writer, the creative process, and motherhood.
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
“Quiet Night Think is a stunning work. Gillian Sze has ‘the acrobatic ear’ and a generous mind. To be a mother, a daughter, a writer, a self — through reflection and poetry, essay and remembrance, these fragile threads carry one another in profound, transporting ways. I know I will return to this extraordinary book again and again.”
— Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Sze draws on emotion-imbued imagery from nature, daily observations and intellectual investigations, punctuated by intimate, often heartrending glimmers that captivate all the way to the book’s end.”
— Montreal Review of Books
“Quiet Night Think by Gillian Sze is a collection of finely observed poems and invitingly associative essays, in which Sze muses on language, translation, and individual words.”
— Poetry Foundation
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