Medium

by Skibsrud, Johanna

• ISBN13: 9781771668736
• ISBN10: 1771668733
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-03-05
• Publisher: Book*hug Press

Summary

From award-winning writer Johanna Skibsrud, Mediumshares the lives and perspectives of women who—in their roles as biological, physical, or spiritual mediums—have helped to shape the course of history.

Helen of Troy, Anne Boleyn, Shakuntala Devi, Hypatia of Alexandria, Marie Curie: Medium interprets the voices of women vilified over time, silenced by famous husbands, forced into sex work, or wrongly accused. Reckoning with the dominant historical narratives of each woman’s era, Skibsrud underscores the power of poetry to bring about new formulations for understanding the relationship between past and present, self and other.

These deeply resonant and performative poems use language as a bridge across experience, sensibility, and time. Each exploration begins with a brief vignette inspired by the “vidas” that once began manuscripts of the troubadours. Both vidas and poems provide lyrical reinterpretations of real and imagined elements in the lives of scholars, scientists, computer engineers, mystics, entrepreneurs, artists, nurses, and other leaders.

Author Biography

Johanna Skibsrud is the author of three previous collections of poetry, three novels— including the Scotiabank Giller Prize– winning novel, The Sentimentalists— and three nonfiction titles, including The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature, and Being, and most recently, Fool: A Study in Literature and Practice. An Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Arizona, Johanna divides her time between Tucson, Arizona, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Table of Contents

Contents The Sybil Speaks I Stood Before Myself And Reached Out [The Fire Reaches The Water’ s Edge] I Remember The Ping, Ping Sometimes, I Tell My Daughter (Little Blue Lights) In The Churchyard, The Speckled Bird Enter, King I Go Down to the Dock I Have Been Busy We Feared the Wood I Should, At Least, Make the Short Trek We Were Taught To Be Seen, Then, I Begin To Loathe the King Because “ Not-Man” Can Be Said “ Let Them Slice Off Our Heads” One Day, A Dead Man We Were Computers, Officially I Am Lit Up It Was Not Me A Bird Is the Sum of its Feathers Memory Is a Blazing Thing I Think Of “ Gustave” Time Exists, It Does Not Flow Backwards. Don’ t Touch Me “ Of Ten Parts, Man Enjoys… ” I am a Woman (Ballad of Jane Roe) Everything Was Still Quite Alright The World Appears To Us There is No Reason Put Down Your Trumpet O Body I Go Out Every Morning This Is A Poem To Find A Door is Not to Enter It