Poetry by a South Asian Canadian Author
By Monica Nathan
10 years ago, Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey exploded onto the literary scene, inspiring a new generation of poetry lovers and revitalizing the genre in ways this country hadn’t seen in decades. milk and honey became a cultural phenomenon, translated into over 40 languages and selling more than 11 million copies worldwide, an unprecedented success for a modern-day collection.
Poetry has long been celebrated for its artistic expression and emotional resonance. Along with the written word, its return to the mainstream meant renewed enthusiasm for poetry as performance art, with events like the FOLD’s spoken word showcase highlighting the form’s
unique musicality.
milk and honey’s success helped invigorate an appetite for greater diversity in Canadian storytelling. And this month, we recommend feasting on poetry collections by South Asian Canadians to satisfy that hunger. For too long, South Asian narratives in mainstream literature
have been limited to themes of migration and colonial legacies. These poets, however, are reshaping the category and expanding the conversation. With humour, longing, grief, and rage, they explore deeply relatable experiences that reflect the richness of the diaspora. We invite
you to slow down and sink into these exceptional works.
milk and honey by Rupi Kaur (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
Since its debut, milk and honey has sold more than 6 million copies globally, becoming the highest-selling book of poetry in the 21st century and propelling Rupi Kaur into the stratosphere as the voice of a generation. milk and honey has taken millions of readers on a shared journey through life’s most emotional moments, reminding us along the way that there is sweetness everywhere, if only we are willing to look. milk and honey is one of the FOLD’s 12 Books that Shaped the Way We Read.
A Fate Worse Than Death by Nisha Patel (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Poems that interrogate the complexities of disability, based on the author’s evaluation of her own medical records.
A Fate Worse Than Death is a stunning poetic investigation of the worthiness of disabled life as told through the author’s evaluation of her own medical records over the course of a decade. Living with treatment-resistant diabetes, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and complex chronic pain, Nisha Patel reveals how her multiple disabilities intertwine with her day-to-day life, even when care and treatments are not available. As she works through bouts of illness, neglect, and care, Patel reveals how poetry provides her a way to resist the sway of medical hegemony and instead offer complex accounts of pain, sickness, and anger, but also love.
Navigating the menial and capitalist systems of health care and paperwork, documentation, and forms, Patel uses clinical texts in visual poems that show how words like patient and client underscore medical access and denial of coverage more than words like person and care. Patel asks us to consider if her life is worth living – and saving. The future of her disabled body and her desire for it is a building meditation as the collection progresses, ending not so much with a finite ending of cured illness and disease than with a look at how we can embody hope and joy in a disabled body, as it is the body that, like time, goes on.
A Year of Last Things by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back
Following several of his internationally acclaimed novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje’s long-awaited return to poetry. In pieces that are sometimes witty, sometimes moving, and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and the abandoned landscapes we hold on to to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.
Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Molière’s chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to the California coast and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges memory with the present, in the way memory as the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence everything that surrounds him.
You Still Look the Same by Farzana Doctor (Freehand Books)
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