Between Dusk and Night

By Emily McGiffin

There are many journeys encompassed in the pages of this mature and well-crafted first collection; literal travels to different parts of the world, to Europe and Africa, are the outward manifestation of the inward quest, the asking of the old but still essential questions: What is real? What is true? What is honourable? What is right? Yet these questions are new in that the poet is deeply concerned with the need to find a new paradigm, a new way to relate to the earth at this time of ever-heightening environmental crisis. And this seeking for how to be in and of the earth is paralleled by a personal search for intimacy with her fellow humans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781771314213

Emily McGiffin

Emily McGiffin’s poetry was awarded the 2008 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and was a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 2004 and 2005. She lives in northwest BC.

Book preview

Between Dusk and Night

Between Dusk and Night

Emily McGiffin

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McGiffin, Emily, 1980-




Between dusk and night / Emily McGiffin.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-771314-21-3

I. Title.

PS8625.G52B48 2012      C811'6     C2011-908123-7

copyright © Emily McGiffin, 2012

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

The cover image is a photograph of Hudson Bay Mountain by Brian Huntington.

Cover design by Cheryl Dipede.

The author photo was taken by Dani Couture.

The print edition of the book is set in Centaur.

Print design and layout by Alan Siu.

Brick Books

431 Boler Road, Box 20081

London, Ontario N6K 4G6

www.brickbooks.ca

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and the CAA Award for Poetry 2013.

Poems with an urgent desire to discover a way to be in right relation to other creatures and to the earth itself.

There are many journeys encompassed in the pages of this mature and well-crafted first collection; literal travels to different parts of the world, to Europe and Africa, are the outward manifestation of the inward quest, the asking of the old but still essential questions: What is real? What is true? What is honourable? What is right? Yet these questions are new in that the poet is deeply concerned with the need to find a new paradigm, a new way to relate to the earth at this time of ever-heightening environmental crisis. And this seeking for how to be in and of the earth is paralleled by a personal search for intimacy with her fellow humans.

Throughout the collection, McGiffin never forgets that we are also animals, that we are as vulnerable at twilight, in the wolfish light, as any other creature struggling to complete its brief sojourn on earth.

for Connie and Eleanor

CONTENTS

Wokkpash

Setting Out

Tumbler

Another Summer

Rain

As Air

Parasitism

Rainstorm

Anaemia

Una via dove mi specchio

Note on Astronomy

Living at 9.8 m/s²

Dioskorides

Cave Paintings

Altar

Cuttlefish Bone

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

Afternoon of Your Parting

Insects in Lamplight After Rain

After a Journey

Breakwater

Fall

The Falls

Firewood

Fog

Nass

Cranes

Grandfather

Negative Space

Canyon

Speechless

Fallen Leaves (Peace Valley Spring)

Fish

Homesteading

Wild Sage

Nettles

Seven Songs for Spatsizi

Swadeshi

Notes

Acknowledgements

Biographical Note

Wokkpash

Dusk. On all sides

mountains

walk into blue distance

without pause, without sound—

four days

and you have seen no one.

Here in this gloaming, this coyote

light thick with the unnamed,

instinctive, earthy, you know nothing

the dusk doesn’t. And how uneasy:

at the treeline, even

traces of your