Grace
Biography
Grace is a settler living in Ontario on the traditional and Treaty territory of the Anishinabek people, now known as the Chippewa Tri-Council comprised of the Beausoleil, Rama, and Georgina Island First Nations. Her debut collection of poetry, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak, is published by Guernica Editions and a Lambda Award finalist. Her work can be found in Grain Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Arc Poetry, and elsewhere.
Poetics Statement
Author photo of Grace, smiling at the camera. Grace is wearing a dark blue button-up shirt with light pink and blue flower print. The colour of the background moves in a gradient from white (lower camera-left corner) up towards a medium shade of grey.
“For me, poetry is magic because it allows me to bend time. There is no question that by writing poetry, we can not only reimagine the future, but also communicate it to those around us—and ultimately, bring this future into reality. But more than that, when I revisit my memories through a poem, it is like giving these memories second, third, fourth lives. Lives that are less painful. Kinder. The act of writing has given my own life more hope, and an opening that was not there before.
Being a Hong-Kong-born Cantonese-speaker, I don’t know if I will ever be able to escape this pull of the past. Incorporating Cantonese into my poetry, however scarce, has also been a way to stay close to my mother tongue and keep it alive, something that I feel more urgently now than ever before due to the language’s survival now being at risk in Hong Kong. Through writing, I hope to always have a path back to a home that I can no longer physically return to. Through poetry, I hope to make a home in a different shape, in another form.”
Sample of Poet's Work
At Your Best
It is Friday night and we are at home
on the couch, your head on my shoulder, a well
-worn path. This is not the first time
you have slowed my hours
and yet
how the seconds gasp
to be doing nothing at all but feeling
the universe
wax content in your breath.
It is Saturday night and we’ve left our past
lovers in a lull
-aby moon that croons beneath a dusty frame
like a memory
of the sun that offers no warmth.
There is only the green
of your eyes ringed with gold, as clear as a summer
stream, and I feel
as if I will never thirst again.
It is Sunday morning and the spell sighs
unbroken, I trace you
in what’s left of stardust. Another leaf has
burst forth from the English ivy
in the night. I can’t remember
when I gave the sun
back his hours but now
I am at peace with the world
-’s unloveliness. Yes, I would be happy
doing this every night
for the rest of my life.
*Title references a song by Aaliyah
How to Get Over the Fear of Public Speaking
My father is a good
Christian man who speaks with the kind
of grace that can rouse three hundred souls, even during the
pauses, even when he’s taking a
breath. Cantonese slips
on eloquence like a cheung sam dress
as it leaves
his tongue. Have you ever seen a congregation inhale
as one, straighten its shoulders
like an orchestra brought to attention?
My father has a voice
like a train rushing headlong over the tracks
near our church.
My father’s voice was made
for the gavel.
My father’s voice gathers clouds.
“Be ye angry, and sin
not: let not the sun go
down upon your wrath.”
When I was a child,
my father and I foughts
and my voice would cower, play Peter, deny me
though it loved me. My voice
would get lost, never find its way
out of the safety of my lips.
My voice was not made
for war.
It had
the shakes
and
a fear
of crowds.
Now, when I call upon my voice,
I tell it this:
I am
my father’s daughter.
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