Flowers We Will Never Know the Names Of

About this book

"This new long poem by an important Canadian poet is about love and grief, a palimpsest against violence and loss. Written in the language of flowers, reimagining the alphabet of floral symbols, and their meaning, it marks the 25th anniversary of the murders of fourteen women students at Montreal's L'École Polytechnique, on December 6, 1989, a history-changing event. It is an incantation, a chant, a protest, memento mori, an invocation, a prayer for peace organized in fourteen sections. This bouquet challenges the precision of syntax, liberates lyric and provokes the spell-checker. Common flower names are transformed, and old familiar names evocatively rewritten especially using enjambment, a passionate and strikingly female device."--jacket.