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The Missing Field
Guernica Editions, Fall 2018
80 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771832779
ISBN10: 1771832770
English
$20.00 Canada, $20.00 US
Read more from the Essential Poets Series
Jennifer Zilm's second 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. The missing field is an imaginative space where all the documents lost to time can be re-imagined.
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"
Waiting Room is compelling, gripping, and familiar. It is a valuable contribution to the documentary tradition in Canadian poetry.
Ryan Cox, Canadian Literature
For a first book, Waiting Room demonstrates Jennifer Zilm’s already strong talent & 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
Awards
- League of Canadian Poets Pat Lowther Memorial Award (shortlisted)
Reviews
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Poetry Reviews by Rose Morris
The Malahat Review - April 1, 2019
Books by Jennifer Zilm
