Undoing Hours
By Selina Boan
()
About this ebook
Selina Boan’s debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours, considers the various ways we undo, inherit, reclaim and (re)learn. Boan’s poems emphasize sound and breath. They tell stories of meeting family, of experiencing love and heartbreak, and of learning new ways to express and understand the world around her through nêhiyawêwin.
As a settler and urban nehiyaw who grew up disconnected from her father’s family and community, Boan turns to language as one way to challenge the impact of assimilation policies and colonization on her own being and the landscapes she inhabits. Exploring the nexus of language and power, the effects of which are both far-reaching and deeply intimate, these poems consider the ways language impacts the way we view and construct the world around us. Boan also explores what it means to be a white settler–nehiyaw woman actively building community and working to ground herself through language and relationships. Boan writes from a place of linguistic tension, tenderness and care, creating space to ask questions and to imagine intimate decolonial futures.
Selina Boan
Selina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw writer living on the traditional, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. Her debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours, is forthcoming with Nightwood Editions in Spring 2021. Her work has been published widely, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She has received several honours, including the 2017 National Magazine Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2020 CBC poetry award. She is currently a poetry editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and is a member of The Growing Room Collective.
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Undoing Hours - Selina Boan
Undoing Hours
Nightwood Editions
2021
Copyright © Selina Boan, 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].
Nightwood EditionsNightwood Editions
P.O. Box 1779
Gibsons, BC V0N 1V0
Canada
www.nightwoodeditions.com
Cover Design: Angela Yen
Typography: Carleton Wilson
Supported by the Government of Canada Supported by the Canada Council of the Arts Supported by the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council
Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.
This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Undoing hours / Selina Boan.
Names: Boan, Selina, author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210106107 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210106158 | ISBN 9780889713963 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889713970 (HTML)
Classification: LCC PS8603.O226 U53 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
contents
the plot so far
meet cree: a practical guide to language
morning in our apartment, a small, wet funeral
ongoing conversations with my acne
a run, a burn, a beck
in six, the seasons
how to find your father
love poem on a break
my mother’s oracle cards said
body humour
small talk
in cree there is no word for half/brother
inside this hour / another hour inside / another hour
minimal pairs are words holding hands
what you miss doesn’t always matter and vice versa
ongoing conversations with nitôn
alter, ego
with love,
emails with nohtâwiy
campaign for my body’s mess
2.1.a questions and answers
email drafts to nohtâwiy
i didn’t know the future would be another love poem
on wanting
suck it up <3
run the hurt
ᐸᐢᑎᐯᐤ
have you ever fallen in love with a day?
all you can is the best you can
ongoing conversations with nitêh
notes
acknowledgements
about the author
If I’m transformed by language, I am often
crouched in footnote or blazing in title.
Where in the body do I begin;
—Layli Long Soldier
the plot so far
ask / what is the history / of a word / a lake of commas /
a pause in the muscle of night / a dry river and the snow it
holds / i am afraid of getting this life / wrong / a thick-
rimmed fence / coins settled in a drawer for food / eat half
a lemon and you’ll feel fine / i promise
in the dictionary / the nêhiyawêwin word
mahtakoskacikew / translates to / s/he settles or lays
on top of everything / i’ll tell you a story / i stained my
hands as a kid in the backyard where i grew / peeling open
walnut shells / trying to find the part i could eat
at sixteen / i scaled the green water tower / settled at the
top for a better view / dreamt mother wasn’t young /
driving a VW van cushioned with gas / hands on