The Missing Field
- Publisher
- Guernica Editions
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2018
- Category
- Canadian, Women Authors, Places
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771832779
- Publish Date
- Sep 2018
- List Price
- $20.00
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Jennifer Zilm's poetry collection, The Missing Field, concerns themes of translation, preservation and the engagement with the transitory documents of everyday life, whether a snapshot of a Vancouver bus, postcards from the Middle East, lecture notes on Euripides, a van Gogh museum catalogue or marginalia in a water-damaged collection of Rilke poems.
About the author
Vancouver-based Jennifer Zilm received a B.A. and an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of British Columbia and was a doctoral fellow at McMaster University, where her (unfinished) dissertation focused on the liturgical and poetic texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A graduate of Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio and the Humber College School for Writers, Zilm's writing has been published in numerous journals, including Prism International, Prairie Fire, Grain, CV2, The Antigonish Review, Vallum, and Women in Judaism and Poetry. Zilm is the author of two chapbooks: The whole and broken yellows (2013) and October Notebook (2015). Zilm has been a finalist for many contests, including The Malahat Review's Far Horizons Award and CV2's 2-Day Poem Contest. A draft of Waiting Room was shortlisted for the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Waiting Room is her debut book of poetry. Learn more at www.jenniferzilm.com.
Awards
- Short-listed, League of Canadian Poets Pat Lowther Memorial Award (Short-listed)
Excerpt: The Missing Field (by (author) Jennifer Zilm)
Hey you!--this postcard, like every other, is just fragment / of a larger journey. Stepping over the threshold / of the plane, I entered this hot room / of a country. Seen entire the desert seems soft / but the sand is sharp to touch, like turning / hard snow with bare hands when I was a small girl. -- From "Postcard: a desert sestina"
Editorial Reviews
For a first book, Waiting Room demonstrates Jennifer Zilm’s already strong talent and insight. She joins a large number of fine young poets emerging in 21st century Canada … the book achieves a bleak yet open grandeur.
Douglas Balfour, Electric Ruckus
Waiting Room: Zilm encourages readers to engage a bit more than normal in the activity of reading. She dares readers to find beauty in the leftover and the unfinished, in the margins.
Geoffrey Nilson, CV2
Throughout the exploration of different types of documentation and archives, the author investigates how we document and archive ourselves, where we leave our marks and how we mark ourselves.
The Malahat Review
Waiting Room is compelling, gripping, and familiar. It is a valuable contribution to the documentary tradition in Canadian poetry.
Ryan Cox, Canadian Literature
