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After That

Poems

Author Lorna Crozier
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Paperback
$18.95 US
| $22.95 CAN
McClelland & Stewart
On sale Sep 05, 2023 | 104 Pages | 9780771004285
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2024 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, Third Place Winner

From Lorna Crozier, the poet that Ursula Le Guin called a “truth teller” and “visionary,” comes a collection of soul-stirring poems that follow the death of a loved one.

After That is a book written from the dark hollow we fall into when we lose those we love. Lorna Crozier’s sure poetry finds the words to engage with the grief that comes from the death of her partner, the writer Patrick Lane, whom she’d lived with for forty years, many of them tumultuous. With grace and precision, she illuminates sorrow. The light the poems cast travels far enough to reach anyone who has experienced loss. These pages engage us with many familiar yet magical things—not only paper wasps, but their libraries; not only herons, but their role as aging monks. Crozier takes us through the domestic and natural worlds into the cagey and metaphysical place we call the beyond. Without offering false comfort, the poems turn over our own grief so that we can catch a glimpse of the new life inside us again.
NORTH OF WINTER

The dictionary word of the day is ultima Thule,
the land beyond the northernmost region on the maps.
Is that where you are now? Your poems loved winter.
Like the Mad Trapper are you walking backwards,
bone glasses over your eyes so you won’t go blind?
You were before you died, going blind I mean, the straight
lines on a grid wavering when you looked close.
Macular degeneration, the doctor said, for which there is no cure.
May I say, now that my words cannot disturb you (we were so careful
near the end), you were dying though I could not see it then.
     In Saskatchewan
we drove through countless storms, your hands tight on the wheel,
snakes of snow slithering across the road, erasing the yellow line,
joining lane and ditch. That was the start perhaps,
your eyes blizzarded. In this north of north where I can’t go,
your breath’s come back and hangs in ice-flecked clouds
as you walk backwards into snow. Through narrow slits cut
into bone, bone is all you see.
Copyright © 2023 by Lorna Crozier. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Longlisted for the 2024 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry

Praise for Lorna Crozier

“Breathtakingly down-to-earth and reassuringly lyrical, new poems by Lorna Crozier are always a reason for rejoicing." —Globe and Mail

"[She has the] ability to create poems in which almost impossibly delicate, sharply focused imagery evokes emotional vastness." —Vancouver Sun

"Crozier's fans have come to expect graceful clarity, sly humour, a strong affinity for the animal world, and a subversive feminist tilt to the mirror she holds up to human affairs. She continues to provide these things . . ." —Books in Canada

"Crozier writes of a world of imperfection, clumsiness, violence, betrayal, pain, and in spite of everything, delight, and love. . . . Always accessible, Crozier speaks a language we understand, but she uses it to tell us of things we don't." —Canadian Literature
© Angie Abdou
LORNA CROZIER is the author of the memoir Through the Garden, which was named a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. She has published eighteen books of poetry, including God of Shadows, What the Soul Doesn’t Want, The Wrong Cat, Small Mechanics, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems, and Whetstone. She is also the author of the memoir Small Beneath the Sky, which won the Hubert Evans Award for Creative Nonfiction. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for Inventing the Hawk and three additional collections were finalists for this award. She has received the Canadian Authors Association Award, three Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was awarded the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and she has received five honorary doctorates for her contributions to Canadian literature. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia. View titles by Lorna Crozier

About

2024 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, Third Place Winner

From Lorna Crozier, the poet that Ursula Le Guin called a “truth teller” and “visionary,” comes a collection of soul-stirring poems that follow the death of a loved one.

After That is a book written from the dark hollow we fall into when we lose those we love. Lorna Crozier’s sure poetry finds the words to engage with the grief that comes from the death of her partner, the writer Patrick Lane, whom she’d lived with for forty years, many of them tumultuous. With grace and precision, she illuminates sorrow. The light the poems cast travels far enough to reach anyone who has experienced loss. These pages engage us with many familiar yet magical things—not only paper wasps, but their libraries; not only herons, but their role as aging monks. Crozier takes us through the domestic and natural worlds into the cagey and metaphysical place we call the beyond. Without offering false comfort, the poems turn over our own grief so that we can catch a glimpse of the new life inside us again.

Excerpt

NORTH OF WINTER

The dictionary word of the day is ultima Thule,
the land beyond the northernmost region on the maps.
Is that where you are now? Your poems loved winter.
Like the Mad Trapper are you walking backwards,
bone glasses over your eyes so you won’t go blind?
You were before you died, going blind I mean, the straight
lines on a grid wavering when you looked close.
Macular degeneration, the doctor said, for which there is no cure.
May I say, now that my words cannot disturb you (we were so careful
near the end), you were dying though I could not see it then.
     In Saskatchewan
we drove through countless storms, your hands tight on the wheel,
snakes of snow slithering across the road, erasing the yellow line,
joining lane and ditch. That was the start perhaps,
your eyes blizzarded. In this north of north where I can’t go,
your breath’s come back and hangs in ice-flecked clouds
as you walk backwards into snow. Through narrow slits cut
into bone, bone is all you see.
Copyright © 2023 by Lorna Crozier. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Reviews

Longlisted for the 2024 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry

Praise for Lorna Crozier

“Breathtakingly down-to-earth and reassuringly lyrical, new poems by Lorna Crozier are always a reason for rejoicing." —Globe and Mail

"[She has the] ability to create poems in which almost impossibly delicate, sharply focused imagery evokes emotional vastness." —Vancouver Sun

"Crozier's fans have come to expect graceful clarity, sly humour, a strong affinity for the animal world, and a subversive feminist tilt to the mirror she holds up to human affairs. She continues to provide these things . . ." —Books in Canada

"Crozier writes of a world of imperfection, clumsiness, violence, betrayal, pain, and in spite of everything, delight, and love. . . . Always accessible, Crozier speaks a language we understand, but she uses it to tell us of things we don't." —Canadian Literature

Author

© Angie Abdou
LORNA CROZIER is the author of the memoir Through the Garden, which was named a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book and a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. She has published eighteen books of poetry, including God of Shadows, What the Soul Doesn’t Want, The Wrong Cat, Small Mechanics, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems, and Whetstone. She is also the author of the memoir Small Beneath the Sky, which won the Hubert Evans Award for Creative Nonfiction. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for Inventing the Hawk and three additional collections were finalists for this award. She has received the Canadian Authors Association Award, three Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, the Raymond Souster Award, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was awarded the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and she has received five honorary doctorates for her contributions to Canadian literature. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia. View titles by Lorna Crozier

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