Reading Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang’s poetry collection, Sweet Devilry, coincided with the birth of my first son and it felt like a motherhood primer written by your much smarter, cooler cousin. Since then, her picture book A Flock of Shoes has become a favourite of said son. Sarah’s second poetry collection, Status Update, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and her work has been anthologized in such collections as Best Canadian Poetry 2013, Poet-to-Poet (2013), and the Newborn Anthology (2014). She is also editor of two poetry collections, Desperately Seeking Susans, and Tag: Canadian Poets at Play. Her work for younger readers (A Flock of Shoes, Warriors and Wailers, The Stone Hatchlings, Breathing Fire, and Night Children) has been published and translated internationally, and she is a professor of Creative Writing at Sheridan College. Despite all these accomplishments and accolades, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is also charmingly honest and self-deprecating, as evidenced by her interview on Sachiko Murakami’s wonderful site www.writingsohard.com. We’re so chuffed to have her on the blog that we’re bringing you not one but two episodes of her work.
Missing
The river is missing its clarity. It hides like a woman, caught undressing. The shame of it. The river has lost the hot afternoon sun. The wind that stroked it absently, like a lover already thinking of someone else. There is no small shiver, no pleasure, despite. There is only these men, in waders. The mud stirred and sifted through nets. The small child, who lies unmoving. The river moves on and on, away from itself. As though it could empty all it was into the ocean, and forget.
(written by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, read by Chioke I'Anson)
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