Antecedent

by Juleta Severson-Baker

Antecedent, Severson-Baker’s second collection, is a ferocious and candid outcry from the West. This is a book willing to reveal, to tell the frank truth, about “the weave of what is human.” Among the love and cruelty of existence, the poet uncovers fish guts, little yellow violets, a red fox in an apple orchard, and the lipstick section of London Drugs. From the small towns, big cities, mountains and prairie of her home Alberta, east to Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, then across the pond to England—back in time through ancestors, to the beginning of the universe—Severson-Baker’s unique voice belts out tales of origin stories, "everyself" figures, and how sorrow and growth entwine in the human condition. When she tells us, with breathless wisdom, “this whole thing is about / slices of light,” we trust her.

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SKU: 9781989466582 Categories: ,

$19.95 CAD

Additional information

Weight .19 kg
Dimensions 9 × 6 × 0.27 in
Page Count

80

Binding

Soft Cover with flaps

Year Published

2023

Juleta Severson-Baker

Juleta Severson-Baker’s first book of poetry, Incarnate (Frontenac House, 2013) was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. She lives, writes poetry and works as an Assistant Principal at Calgary Arts Academy in Treaty 7 territory.

we don’t need language
to know love

up the concrete tower
of medicine
into a pillbox office
I wheel my mother
into the speech pathologist’s
promise

re-learning a path
of jaw and swallow
littered with clots
her vowels take the air

and my holy anxieties
feather

her bent neck
lips dry
disobedient tongue

we don’t need language
to know love

the doctor glances at me
I shoot a look
pleading
help her swallow
just swallow
summer plums
roast chicken

water