the berry takes the shape of the bloom

by Andrea Bennett

the berry takes the shape of the bloom originated as a gesture towards optimism after loss and pain, difficulty and fear. It began as a linear narrative, offering a window into one trans person’s life after they felt contented and secure. But in the end these poems, which capture particular moments in time, may recur in any given sometimes what surfaces is anxiety or anger, sometimes love or eagerness. Some poems bear witness; others hold grudges or shake free of them. Together, they entwine around enmeshed experiences of gender, family, trans pregnancy, abuse, fear, and becoming. Before blueberries grow, they grow a bloom that looks like a proto berry. The berry then takes the shape of the bloom that came before it. The berry displaces the bloom that came before it … My mother bloomed and then I was a wave or a skateboard or a foraging deer. My mother bloomed and I did not displace her in the right way. Did I berry?

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Queer

96 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2023

About the author

andrea bennett is a non-binary National Magazine Award–winning writer, editor, and sometimes-illustrator who lives on the northern Sunshine Coast in BC.

Their first book of essays, Like a Boy but Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary (Arsenal Pulp Press), was a CBC Books’ pick for the top Canadian nonfiction of the year, and one of Autostraddle’s best queer books of 2020, as well as a 2022 selection for the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow longlist. Their next book of essays, Hearty: Essays on Pleasure and Subsistence, will come out with ECW Press in 2024.

They are also the author of two poetry collections, Canoodlers (Nightwood, 2014) and the berry takes the shape of the bloom (Talonbooks, 2023), as well as two travel guides to Montreal and Quebec City.

Reviews

[L]

"As a child I believed that solitude was a promise I could keep."
-pg. 8

"My neighbour's magnolias is one thousand birds in the early stages of flight."
- pg. 11

"I keep returning to an essay about a rose garden, the idea that helping something flourish could keep me alive."
- pg. 12

"I receive a picture of blooms from a family member in the desert. I don't always rememberwho I've been family to."
- pg. 14

"My mother's love missed me like an arrow misses a deer."
- pg. 19

"After I left I hoped he'd get sober. After I left I learned how to stop wanting things for people that they don't want for themselves."
- pg. 49

'When the forest burns...' on page 83 *