news | Tuesday October 18, 2022

“HARROWINGS” has Arrived!

The latest poetry collection from Governor General’s Award winner Cecily Nicholson, HARROWINGS, is here and we can’t wait for you to read it! Grown in the loam of a childhood spent on a farm and time spent volunteering with an agricultural enterprise led by formerly incarcerated people, this collection sinks its spade into the floral language of crops, farm labour, and gardening and subverts it, putting it to work in service of abolitionist futures. Planted throughout HARROWINGS are the voices of contemporary and historic Black luminaries drawn from wide-ranging sources, including the websites of non-profits, the Food Network, and literary works. This poetry wanders arable fields, sifts seeds, casts a critical eye at the ways in which agricultural practices have upheld and progressed colonial structures. The tension between agriculture as nurturing and agriculture as an instrument of oppression sings loud. From “carver (a hand in relief)”:

“The language and logics of farm stem from structures of settler colonialism even if they embody emancipatory practices. This makes for complicated dreams.”

Rich with camaraderie, Nicholson’s fourth collection of poetry brims with her trademark eye for justice and beauty. From “correspondence 1”:

“The sky cast bush
shadows an acres off relief in a thin band of horizon
stars rose brightly and never set, circling the best days

aglow filled our hearts
as if our homeland
hometown.”

Pick up your copy here!