Deriving

by Jennifer Bowering Delisle

Deriving is a feminist exploration of the creation of life, of family, and of words themselves. Delisle How does past infertility colour the experience of new motherhood? How do historical voices echo in the present? How does language impact our ways of being in the world? These poems embrace the rich material of mothering with unapologetic honesty, confronting the experiences that some would keep hidden. Fear, anger, envy mix with joy and ultimately hope, as Delisle considers the challenges of conceiving and raising children in both familial and global contexts. Deriving is a poignant, lyrical meditation on longing, place, and embodiment.

I watched it freeze up,
rafts of white snagging beneath the bridge,
frazil ice,
pans linked along the shoreline.
Inside me my son was building
white fat on bone.
- from “North Saskatchewan”

96 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 30, 2022

About the author

Jennifer Bowering Delisle is the author of The Bosun Chair, a hybrid of poetry and family memoir forthcoming from NeWest Press. She has published poetry, non-fiction and fiction in magazines and anthologies across North America.

Jennifer has a PhD in Canadian Literature, and is also the author of The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-Migration.