BURNING PROVINCE
McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House (2020)
Winner of the Canada-Japan Literary Award
Winner of the BC & Yukon Book Prizes' Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award
From the publisher:
Acerbic, moving, and formally astonishing, Michael Prior's second collection explores the enduring impact of the Japanese internment upon his family legacy and his mixed-race identity.
Amid the record-breaking wildfires that scorched British Columbia in 2015 and 2017, the poems in this collection move seamlessly between geographical and psychological landscapes, grappling with cultural trauma and mapping out complex topographies of grief, love, and inheritance: those places in time marked by generational memory "when echo crosses echo."
Burning Province is an elegy for a home aflame and for grandparents who had a complex relationship to it—but it is also a vivid appreciation of mono no aware: the beauty and impermanence of all living things. "The fireflies stutter like an apology," Prior writes; "I would be lying to you / if I didn't admit I love them."
WHERE TO FIND
REVIEWS OF
BURNING PROVINCE
"A journey of tenderness, testimony, and fearlessness"
"Rich with insights about memory and identity"
“Ferociously beautiful…With a poised, oneiric precision…Prior folds, unfolds, and refolds the experiences of a speaker’s maternal grandparents’ confinement in a Japanese Canadian internment camp on the brink of World War II, a biracial speaker’s own engagements with prejudice, and the ever-present vexations of cultural memory in such a way that they turn into and illuminate one another everywhere…That Prior is able to recover meaning from nightmare, silence, half-stories, and dislocation is reason enough to read this ravishing collection. The humility and grace with which he handles his material’s ‘creased [and] overlapping planes’ is another.”
“Lovely, elegant verse...This collection moves from strength to strength, evoking the careful folds of origami one moment and the fall of light on water another...[Prior] can also craft a moody and touching love poem like ‘The Night,’ and then pivot to ‘In Cloud Country,’ a poem of almost metaphysical reach—think John Donne beside the Fraser.”
"Here and elsewhere, Prior telescopes the distance between the personal, the political, and geographic, his language roving between intimate observations of the self and the world – both natural and manufactured – beyond…the poetry in Burning Province is brief but densely packed, finely tuned and aware."
“The book is brimming with technical dexterity. Moreover, Burning Province proves itself to be the type of book that teaches readers how to parse it as they move through its complex web of allusions and images…[Prior] exhibits a deftness that makes him stand out among his peers…”
“In the intimate and spellbinding world of Burning Province, there are many ways the past is reborn or transformed into the present….Prior highlights the complexities of relationships to others and the self with a discerning and illuminating eye. Indeed, it is this illuminating gaze that makes Burning Province such a brilliant collection. The poems within are as searing and unforgettable as the fireflies that appear again and again throughout the book… a transformative and transcendent experience.”
“[Prior] moves between past and present, interior and exterior, the real and imagined…And his expert repertoire of internal rhyme, assonance, and emblem enhances and embellishes his craft. Michael Prior’s dexterous genius is substantiated in this aesthetically well-wrought collection. ”
One of Bustle's "Quarantine Reads from Your Favorite Authors"
A Read it Forward "2020 Poetry Collection Not to Be Missed"
A CBC book "to read to celebrate Asian Heritage Month in Canada"
A CBC pick "to read to celebrate Poetry Month"
A CBC poetry collection "to watch for in Spring 2020"
SELECTED POEMS
"A Hundred and Fifty Pounds" (The Poetry Foundation)
"New Year" (The Poetry Foundation)
"Palinode" (The Sewanee Review; reprinted by Poetry Daily)
"The Border" and "Estuary" (The Sewanee Review)
"Georgic" (Poetry Daily)
"Century Plants" (The New Republic)
"Wakeful Things" (Academy of American Poets)
"My Father's Birthday is the Day Before Mine" (Poetry)
"The Light from Canada" and two other poems (The PN Review)
"Pastoral" and "Self Portrait as a Portrait of..." (Poetry Northwest)
"Four-Leaf Clover" (Kenyon Review)
"Broken Record" (Crazyhorse)
"After Noguchi" and two other poems (Narrative)
"Campanology" (Narrative)
"Tashme" and "White Noise Machine" (The Margins)
"Minoru" (The Margins)
"Lines Written While Visiting the Valley..." (Beloit Poetry Journal)
"Light and Years" and "Mute Swans, Yellow Irises" (The Manchester Review)
"In Cloud Country" (The Walrus)
BIOGRAPHY
Michael Prior is a writer, teacher, and editor. His most recent book of poems, Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House, 2020), won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes' Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016), which was named one of the best books of the year by the CBC.
Michael is the recipient of fellowships from the Amy Clampitt Residency, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Jerome Foundation, and Hawthornden Literary Retreat. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies across North America and the UK, including Poetry, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, PN Review, Ambit, Global Poetry Anthology, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series.
Michael holds graduate degrees from Cornell University and the University of Toronto, and is an Assistant Professor of English and ACM Mellon Faculty Fellow at Macalester College. He currently edits the Véhicule Press poetry imprint, Signal Editions.
CONTACT
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