Set mainly in the rural, HARROWINGS connects with Black intellectual and art history in relation to agriculture. The poems include pulses of memoir from the poet's childhood growing up on a farm, as well as from more recent pandemic experiences volunteering for a local agricultural enterprise led by people who were formerly incarcerated. Considering movements organizing for food security and related, resurgent practices, HARROWINGS also contends with "the farm" as a tract of colonial advance. Tropes of tradition and supremacy are confronted in this study of biome, plants, and soil. Despite episodic and chronic illness, and by way of practical tasks such as sowing, pruning, and watering, the poetry advances with love towards abolitionist futures.

Cecily Nicholson
Cecily Nicholson has worked with women of the downtown eastside community of Vancouver for the past ten years and is currently the Coordinator of Funds with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. She has collaborated most recently as a member of the VIVO Media Arts collective, the Press Release poetry collective and the No One is Illegal, Vancouver collective. Triage is her first book.

Cecily Nicholson's profile page

• Short-listed, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
• Long-listed, Pat Lowther Memorial Award
• Long-listed, Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry

"A master of language construction, Nicholson consistently writes memorable poetic language throughout this collection." – Rungh Magazine

“HARROWINGS ranges across history and memory to present activism, tilling the space where food meets farm meets race meets colonial structures, reckoning with all these histories” – the Winnipeg Free Press