Sanctuaries of Invention

In the year of Covid-19,lockdowns,and in Trinidad a state of emergency, Jennifer Rahim's collection explores the nature of time, place, and the accidental arrival of pandemics of mass death. It reminds us that pandemics have their own history, but never without human triggers, and how much solace we have derived from poetry this last year. Rahim's collection expands out of the restrictions of home to map the wider worlds of memory and desire, charting journeys from Valencia, through Salybia, Balandra, Rampanalgas, Cumana, Toco, and LAnse Noir. She urges that hope must always be bold and sharpened for tomorrows.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 88 pages
Publication date: 21 October 2021
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd

In the year of Covid-19, lockdowns, and a state of emergency in Trinidad, it is not surprising that thoughts turn to the nature of time, place, and the not quite accidental arrival of pandemics of mass death. For Jennifer Rahim, time is both the history that has shaped the present and the now of social and geographic constriction. At the beginning of the collection, "A Tale of the Orbis Spike, 1610" (the recorded dip in carbon dioxide levels when around fifty million native peoples of the New World were exterminated as the result of European settler invasion), reminds that pandemics have their own history, though never without human triggers. At the end of the collection, "No /Language is a Virus" records the viral power of language for both good and ill, the latter not least in the era of Trump and the resurgence of racist white nationalism in Trinidads big neighbor to the north. But Rahim also reminds us how much solace we have derived from poetry this last year, because "Words fly the grave, steal/ the only thunder a virus can claim,/ and, alive,/ witness to goodness that quietly thrives."

Between those two points, the collection expands out of the restrictions of home, that place where "We're strategizing for survival/ strip-searching every sneeze/ for an invisible assassin suited in capsid" – though sanctuaries of invention can be found in the smallest spaces – to map the wider worlds of memory and desire – in a vivid series of poems (“mapping home”) that chart journeys from Valencia, through Salybia, Balandra, Rampanalgas, Cumana, Toco, and LAnse Noir – places that Rahim's poems bring to sensuous geographic, human, and historical life and make you want to visit.

With the celebration of heroes who range from the fighting women of Greek myth, to poetic inspirations from Marian.

Weight: 114g
Dimension: 154 x 234 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781845234539