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Poetry Canadian

Tell the Birds Your Body is Not a Gun

by (author) Rayanne Haines

Publisher
Frontenac House Ltd.
Initial publish date
Apr 2021
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781989466216
    Publish Date
    Apr 2021
    List Price
    $19.95

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Description

Tell the Birds Your Body is not a Gun, is a book of minimalist poetry, prose poems and poetic essays exploring family grief, healing, and trauma through the female lens. Tell the Birds Your Body is not a Gun is a visceral narrative that questions our relationship with religion and challenges how we reflect on our own memories of trauma. As readers look to the past in the manuscript, they are asked to examine how each of them would experience and react to grief and abuse.

About the author

Rayanne Haines is the executive director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. In 2017, she was shortlisted for Edmonton Poet Laureate and a Mayors Award for Arts Management. She has had the immense privilege of performing her fiction and poetry for diverse audiences from youth to business professional, for various reading series, conferences, and festivals. She has been published in anthologies, magazines, and online. Her poetry has been used as the text for the National Youth Choir of Canada, as well as recorded for a United Kingdom, talking newspaper for the Blind. She's had work published in Canada, the USA, and the UK. Stained With the Colours of Sunday Morning is her first full-length poetry collection. She lives in Edmonton.

Rayanne Haines' profile page

Excerpt: Tell the Birds Your Body is Not a Gun (by (author) Rayanne Haines)

The Point, My Friend

 

today the moon wanted the sun’s face and the sun wanted the moon’s smile so they traded places. at least this is what i told myself while dreaming of tying rocks to my ankles after eating eggs and rum for my fourth breakfast. if i stayed under long enough, surely the sun would change her mind and let me drown in shadows. turns out, a body can’t hold its breath as long as the moon. turns out, trying to die without dying is messy business. yesterday the neighbours i don’t know heard me screaming on the beach. now i have to apologize on behalf of the sun and the moon and my anxiety lemoning the sky—because no one enjoys seeing an unkempt life. and i, wearing a head to toe raspberry-sorbet pantsuit, have to go on living.

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