There’s a shared restlessness in these essays. Something about rejection and belonging. An impulse to leave, keep moving, drive far. Something about creating distance and closeness all at once, a tension between where one is, was, and where one is drawn to be.
Brandi Bird, Clarise Foster, Hannah Green, and Rhayne Vermette make something of that which rejects us. Their voices build shelter out of that which has caused harm. They are artists that look in the rearview and allow the past to draw near. They face bombs with free verse. They write home on their own terms.
Hannah Green: “In a long poem, you can do anything. So what the fuck are you going to do?”
Rhayne Vermette: “Just make movies because, 'why the hell not'”.
Clarise Foster: “it’s whatever a person makes of their passion—the living it”
Brandi Bird: “They remember and that’s enough.”
—Jennifer Still, August 2024
Jennifer Still is an award-winning Winnipeg poet exploring intersections of language and aesthetics. Jennifer’s poems have been published in books and journals across Canada and her recent long poem, legs, is a limited-edition chapbook and award-winning short film collaboration with Winnipeg artists Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau.