Cartograph

These are poems of a woman’s healing journey from both accidental injury to the deeply imbued wounds of colonization. Cara-Lyn Morgan metaphorically maps out the process of recovery within her own body and the land around her, moving though the muscles and sinews of her own being and out across landscapes. Her words create new maps and revisit the ancient ones: Vancouver Island, Georgian Bay, and the prairies all become “a merle of blackbirds,” “wayward unsettling of red lilies after the thunderstorm,” and “soil and sweat, sunlight and crop.” She finds the medicine in each of her different voices: Métis, Trinidadian, and stretchy-pant-wearing yoga lover. In Cartograph she braids together these voices like sweetgrass. Within their woven map, we meet Cara-Lyn Morgan.

- 20170303

Cara-Lyn Morgan’s recent work has appeared in Geist Magazine, the Literary Review of Canada, The Antigonish Review, and various other literary journals across the country. Her debut collection of poetry, What Became My Grieving Ceremony, was awarded the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2015, and her work was selected to appear in Tightrope Press’ Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2015. Cartograph is her second book-length collection of poetry. She lives outside Toronto.