If you have the opportunity, seek out Quiet, the latest collection of poems by Victoria Adukwei Bulley. Bulley lives in England but she spoke at the Vancouver Writers’ Festival last fall and I was lucky enough to hear her spellbinding voice read these strong poems—poems that stirred me with their quiet strength and their reclamation of Black history from the colonial narrative. In the poem revision, she considers new and varied answers to multiple choice tests about the colonial history of the Gold Coast. In the poem How Not to Disappear she draws attention to a police officer’s casual response to a mother’s plea to find her missing son. These poems are both quiet and loud, shifting between small, piercing personal details and broad societal considerations. Read them and feel your mind move.
— Joanna Streetly is the published author of five books. Her work can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2024 and Best Canadian Essays 2017, as well as many literary journals and anthologies. She has lived in unceded Tla-o-qui-aht territory for over thirty years and was the inaugural Tofino Poet Laureate.
You can find Joanna Streetly’s poetry in Issue 299 Spring 2024. Order the issue now:
