The Affirmations

By Luke Hathaway

Shortlisted for the 2023 J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award • Winner of the 2021 Confederation Poets Prize • One of The Times' Best Poetry Books of 2022 • A CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022 • Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award for Poetry

"...a trans-mystical work of love and change..."—Ali Blythe, author of Hymnswitch

The mystics who coined the phrase ‘the way of affirmation’ understood the apocalyptic nature of the word yes, the way it can lead out of one life and into another. Moving among the languages of Christian conversion, Classical metamorphosis, seasonal transformation, and gender transition, Luke Hathaway tells the story of the love that rewired his being, asking each of us to experience the transfiguration that can follow upon saying yes—with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, with all one’s strength ... and with all one’s body, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biblioasis
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781771964869

Luke Hathaway

Luke Hathaway is a trans poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He has been before now at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea. His book Years, Months, and Days was named a best book of 2018 in the New York Times. He mentors new librettists as a faculty member in the Amadeus Choir’s Choral Composition Lab, and makes music with Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA.

Book preview

Contents

A Nativity

New Year Letter

Final Correspondence, on a Gallery Notecard Showing a Detail from a Marginal Decoration in the Luttrell Psalter

The Temple

i. Te lucis ante terminum

ii. Annunciation

iii. Conception

iv. Advice

v. It Is Enough

vi. The Temple

vii. Senex puerum portabat / Lullaby

viii. Birth

The Life to Come

Even So I’ll Gather Roses

Eros and Psyche

Psyche

The Documents

As the hart panteth after the water brooks

More Stanzas for Simeon

Fire Flower

A Sugar Bush in Holy Week

Leçons de ténèbres

A Poor Passion

If thou have borne him hence

Which is the cantus firmus, Dan?

Ballad

Caeneus

Lullaby

Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique circumferentia nullibi

And took her by the hand, and called,

saying, Maid, arise

Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee

Fountain

Burning the Love Letters

Eleven Texts for Unaccompanied Voice

Go and Catch a Falling Star

Hunger

Mercy

Song

If You See Me Fall

Ritual for Midwinter

Showing

Frost

Nocturnall

Et tant m’est amer

Tree

O mad bon moT

Ite, Missa Est

Notes and Acknowledgements

also by luke hathaway:

Groundwork

All the Daylight Hours

Living in the Orchard: The Poetry of Peter Sanger

Years, Months, and Days

The Temple

New Year Letter

edited by luke hathaway:

The Essential Richard Outram

Earth and Heaven: An Anthology of Myth Poetry (with Evan Jones)

The Affirmations

Luke Hathaway

Biblioasis

Windsor, Ontario

Copyright © Luke Hathaway, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The affirmations : poems / Luke Hathaway.

Names: Hathaway, Luke, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210354658 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210354666

ISBN 9781771964852 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771964869 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS8615.A781975 A69 2022 | DDC C811/.6 — dc23

Edited by Jeffery Donaldson

Copy-edited by John Sweet

Text and cover designed by Ingrid Paulson

Cover image by Jon Claytor

Canada Council for the Arts logo Ontario Arts Council Logo

Government of Canada logoOntario Creates logo

Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.

for Daniel Cabena

a nativity

Past contorted orchard apples,

quickly now, toward where the road

bends sharply to the north, the light

increasing as I go so that

I can’t be sure which one of us

illuminates the fence, the horse,

the field held in the crook of hills,

the group of houses — this one? That one

where I would arrive, arriving:

what you’ve carried, leave it here;

what gestures you’ve prepared, now make them;

whether or not they will suffice,

this is the place where you will turn

toward where, behind the little mountain

that humps up in the east, the sky

prepares to loose, at last, by light,

the light

---

new year letter

In 1940, as war in Europe deepened, the English poet W.H. Auden — then living in America — wrote a letter, in verse, to a friend. The result, a long poem with extensive, chatty annotation, was published in Auden’s New Year Letter (the American title was The Double Man) in 1941:

Under the familiar weight

Of winter, conscience and the State,

In loose formations of good cheer,

Love, language, loneliness and fear,

Towards the habits of next year,

Along the streets the people flow . . . .

In January 2018, I decided to try my hand at my own verse letter to a friend, a devotee of Auden, with whom I had been in conversation in person and in letter around some of Auden’s themes. Auden appears in my letter; so does the poet