HARROWINGS (Paperback)

Set mainly in the rural, HARROWINGS connects with Black intellectual and art history in relation to agriculture. The poems include pulses of memoir from the poet's childhood growing up on a farm, as well as from more recent pandemic experiences volunteering for a local agricultural enterprise led by people who were formerly incarcerated. Considering movements organizing for food security and related, resurgent practices, HARROWINGS also contends with "the farm" as a tract of colonial advance. Tropes of tradition and supremacy are confronted in this study of biome, plants, and soil. Despite episodic and chronic illness, and by way of practical tasks such as sowing, pruning, and watering, the poetry advances with love towards abolitionist futures.

Cecily Nicholson is the author of five books, including From the Poplars, recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Wayside Sang, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. Her collaborative practice spans municipal, artist-run centres, and community-based arts organizing, education, and advocacy. She is an assistant professor at the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and the 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at the University of California, Berkeley.