Read a poem from Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Heft by Doyali Islam
CBC Books | | Posted: May 15, 2020 3:02 PM | Last Updated: May 15, 2020
Heft by Doyali Islam is a finalist for the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize.
The award annually gives out two $65,000 prizes — one to a book of Canadian poetry and one to an international book of poetry — making it one of the world's richest prizes of its kind.
The other finalists are Magnetic Equator by Kaie Kellough and How She Read by Chantal Gibson.
The winner will be announced on May 19, 2020.
The poems in Islam's Heft look at the nature of illness, pain and sexuality. The poetry collection casts its lens on normal female sexual experience and the notion of home in light of chronic pain and suspected autoimmune illness on a personal level.
Islam is an award-winning poet and author based in Toronto. Heft is her second collection of poems.
Read an excerpt from Heft below.
visit to a thrift shop | |
| i can't remember which london corner but i remember the brown corduroy making something of my legs as she searched. not purses, but knits. ...outside, winter streets holding shuffling figures close for passing warmth. in a mirror a face not quite hers sees her, searching too. when will you return? she | turns, once again leaving, left. knows she is already forgetting the charge of her mother's eyes, their colour like karkade steeped in evenings. what this language would call hibiscus. she sleeps between fits and wakes to the tv on the wall's other side. she knows it muffles grief, and points to it. |
| From heft by Doyali Islam ©2019. Published by McClelland & Stewart. | |