Land To Light On

by Dionne Brand

Dionne Brand writes about a place where she is an outsider--as any poet or painter must be--and also about the many outsiders who have come here and settled over the years, uncomfortable with the land and its people, uncomfortable sometimes with themselves. No one writes about this country like Brand, free of post-colonial cant yet selvedged with Black suffering in the Americas. Speaking of memory but without a longing for the past, these poems hover between story and song; between groundings of life, wherever your landfall, and the grace of love and light. They ring with a poet's hesitations, a woman's praise and prayer for her people and their place. "It always takes long to come to what you have to say, you have to / sweep this stretch of land up around your feet and point to the / signs, pleat whole histories with pins in your mouth and guess / at the fall of words."

Genres: Poetry, Canada, School, Literature, Canadian Literature, Race, Adult

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 1997

About the author

As a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing.

Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.

What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”

In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...

Reviews

[Carrianne K.Y. Leung · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books on my shelf. In moments of fear, hopelessness and defeat, I turn to Brand's poetry to meditate and gather strength.

[maniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5
I really consumed some insane Canadian content for Canada day this year (totally by accident). Between Videodrome, Land to Light On, and A Complicated Kindness, I think I'm finally starting to understand what the Canadian imagination looks like. It is cold and remote and alienated by the state. It is constantly in a state of flux, vacillating between rage and wonderment. Brand works this vacillation and her language with a rare mastery, shaping the world to her perspective and then reflecting when it doesn't fit. Breaking apart (gently) and remolding. Stepping back again when it still doesn't capture the world, surrendering to the chaotic ocean of life. Even the title itself is a red herring; "I am giving up on a land to light on." Pure genius.

P.S. it was never going to be okay also reflects elements of this imaginary, but I hesitate to categorize it as Canadian as opposed to Oji-Cree-Salteaux. Still, the story simpson tells is indelibly a part of the Canadian story.

[prisca💋 · Rating 4 out of 5]

j’ai oublié de mettre à jour mais je l’ai fini le jour même et c’était vraiment fabuleux ! Long live lesbians ❤️🧡🤍🩷

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A triumphant collection of poetry that engages and inspires both the writer and reader in me. Even the titles of each section of this book moved me into a particular space and time.
Section 1 - I Have Been Losing Roads
Section 2 - All That Has Happened Since
Section 3 - Land To Light On
These are just three of the seven sections that create a sublime and cohesive collection from this Governor General's Literary Award winning poet's collection.

[Jayme · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the things Brand does with language in these poems. The style can change drastically from poem to poem. It often has a stream of consciousness feel to it. And all of them evoked really strong imagery for me. Definitely a collection I will want to return to.

[Juliano · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am so fkn tired of free verse poetry

[Leslie Wexler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite loving What We All Long For , I am totally NOT a fan of Land to Light On. In 1983, Dionne Brand - a revolutionary Marxist - was in Grenada establishing a communist/socialist society when the American troops came in and squashed the movement - simultaneously squashing all of Brand's hopes and ideals regarding communism. This book of poetry is a strong elegy for communism.

Not.A.Fan.

I may be able to POSSIBLY read these poems from a feminist perspective and feel somewhat less detached from them. However, as an economic appraisal of communism's failed ideals - nothing happening there for me.

Inscription:
It was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes
into mine, saying: these are eyes I have known
from the first....It was simple to touch you
against the hacked background, the grain of what we
had been, the choices, years....It was even simple
to take each other's lives in our hands, as bodies.
- Adrienne Rich

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out here I am like someone without a sheet
without a branch but not even safe at sea,
without the relief of the sky or good graces of a door.
If I am peaceful in this discomfort, is not peace,
is getting used to harm. Is giving up, or misplacing
surfaces, the seam in grain, so standing
in a doorway I cannot summon up the yard,
familiar broken chair or rag of cloth on a blowing line,
I cannot smell smoke, something burning in a pit,
or gather air from far off or hear anyone calling.
The doorway cannot bell a sound, cannot repeat
what is outside. My eyes is not a mirror.

- I Have Been Losing Roads, I i, pg. 3

* * *

A comet, slow and magnificent, drapes the north sky
but I cannot see it, cannot allow it, that would be
allowing another sign. And songs, songs to follow.
What songs can sing this anyway, what humming
and what phrase will not abandon me, what woman
with a gun and her fingers to her lips draw us to another
territory further north, further cold, further on,
into the mouth of the Arctic.
I'm heading to frost, to freezing,
how perhaps returning south heads to fever,
and what I'm saving for another time is all our good,
good will, so not listening, not listening
to any dangling voice or low, lifting whistle.
All the sounds gone out, all the wind died away,
I won't look, won't look at the tail of lighted dust.

- I Have Been Losing Roads, II v, pg. 12

* * *

In the middle of traffic at Church and Gerrard I notice someone,
two women, for a moment unfamiliar, not crouched with me
in a hallway, for this moment unfamiliar, not cringing at the
grit of bombers, the whine of our breath in collapsing chests, in
the middle of traffic right there for a moment unfamiliar and
familiar, the light changing and as usual in the middle of almost
dying, yelling phone numbers and parting, feeling now, as the
light beckons, all the delicateness of pedestrians. I wish that I
was forgetful. All that day the streets felt painful and the
subways tender as eggshells.

- All That Has Happened Since, IV ii, pg. 24

* * *

why this voice rank and ready to be called bitter again, liquor
doesn't soothe it and books either, self saboteur, it could be nice
and grateful but Fanon had it, native envy, watery and long as
that bloody sea, envy for everything then, kitchen knives their
dullness or sharpness, shoes their certainty, envelopes their
letters, clocks their lag, paper its clarity, envy to the participle and
adverb, the way they own being, ripe envy full as days, and
breasts, bony as wardrobes, old as babies.

- All That Has Happened Since, IV xii, pg. 38

* * *

Maybe this wide country just stretches your life to a thinness
just trying to take it in, trying to calculate in it what you must
do, the airy bay at its head scatters your thoughts like someone
going mad from science and birds pulling your hair, ice invades
your nostrils in chunks, land fills your throat, you are so busy
with collecting the north, scrambling to the Arctic so wilfully, so
busy getting a handle to steady you to this place you get blown
into bays and lakes and fissures you have yet to see, except
on a map in a schoolroom long ago but you have a sense that
whole parts of you are floating in heavy lake water heading for
what you suspect is some other life that lives there, and you, you
only trust moving water and water that reveals itself in colour. It
always takes long to come to what you have to say, you have to
sweep this stretch of land up around your feet and point to the
signs, pleat whole histories with pins in your mouth and guess
at the fall of words.

- Land to Light On, V i, pg. 43

* * *

I saw her head up the road toward
the evening coming, the road, the same
as when its name was Carib, cut
in the San Fernando hill, that evening
as unconcerned as any for her, bent
on its own gluttony, she, like an ancient
woman with her regular burdens heading
into a hill. I saw her begin again,
the coming dark slipping between her legs
and disappearing into which century past.
I saw her shoulder the dark like another child
and consider its face, its waiting mouth
closed on her breast.
She told me once she loved babies, hated
to see them grow up, she missed
their babyness, that's why she had so many.
I saw her heading up a road into a hill
with her vanity and her lust
not for any man in an electric company truth
bu for her own face.

- Dialectics, VII iii, pg. 55

* * *

Out of them. To where? As i I wasn't them.
To this I suppose. The choices fallen into
and unmade. Out of them. Out of shape
and glimmer and into hissing prose. What
could it mean, all that ocean, all that bush,
all that room, all that hemmed and sweet light.
Don't be mistaken, the whole exercise was
for escaping, the body cut so, the tongue cut
so, the drape of the head and the complications
boiling to their acid verbs. This pine was waiting,
this road already travelled, this sea in the back
of my head roiling its particular wrecks
and like escaping one doesn't look too close
at landing, any desert is lush, sand blooms,
any grit in the mouth is peace, the mechanics
of a hummingbird less blazing than the whirr,
all at once calligraphy and spun prism, this new
landfall when snows come and go and come again,
this landfall happened at your exact flooding and
even though you had a mind, well, landing...
it doesn't count on flesh or memory, or any purposes

- Dialectics, XII, pg. 69

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but although I did like some individual poems, I ended up feeling pretty meh about it. Something about the style didn't work for me — I don't know exactly what it is. But your mileage may vary, and I do think there's some good stuff in here.

EDIT: now that we've talked about it in class, I'm feeling more positive about it.

[ChiChi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it. I could hear it being read to me, the voice was understandable, close, intimate.

II v

A comet, slow and magnificent, drapes the north sky
but I cannot see it, cannot allow it, that would be
allowing another sign. And songs, songs to follow.
What songs can sing this anyway, what humming
and what phrase will now abandon me, what woman
with a gun and her fingers to her lips draw us to another
territory further north, further cold, further on,
into the mouth of the Arctic.
I'm heading to frost, to freezing,
how perhaps returning south heads to fever,
and what I'm saving for another time is all our good,
good will, so not listening, not listening
to any dangling voice or low, lifting whistle.
All the sounds gone out, all the wind died away,
I won't look, won't look at the tail of lighted dust.

[Santiago · Rating 3 out of 5]

7/10

[Meg]

Powerful driving stuff

[Mahfer · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.7⭐️ again, only low rating bc I just CANT with poetry, but this is one of the best I’ve read. really good topic and criticisms

[Simona · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was really really good. First piece of “Toronto literature” I’ve really liked.

[veronika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Understood some parts, didn’t for some others

[Janel D. Brubaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book of Dionne Brand's I ever read was The Blue Clerk. It was a recommended reading for one of the residencies of my M.F.A. program. I read the excerpts that were listed for the residency, and then after the residency ended I went back and reread the whole book because it was an outstanding piece of literary creativity. When I found out Brand was also a prolific poet, I knew I had to start reading her work.

Land to Light On, like many books of poetry, is a conversation about the self in relation to the past. In particular, the horrifically racist past of slavery in the United States, and how that past is still negatively impacting Black people today. Some of the poems feel to almost be written be different speakers, as if the writer herself is channeling the words and lives and experiences of her ancestors and giving them a place to breathe. "The doorway cannot bell a sound, cannot repeat / what is outside. My eyes is not a mirror" (pg 3). "My mouth could not find a language / I find myself instead, useless as that" (pg 5). These poems, these lines are fused with a history that builds an agonizing tension between the reader and the work, as though we are being given a very real gift of seeing into the past and hearing the pain of souls crushed, dominated, and erased.

But there is also a sense of urgency in this book, a sense of the present continuing to point both backward to the past and forward to the potential future. Each poem, each voice that sounds reminiscent of history, also feels full of the primary speaker's experience. At times, the poems feel to include both present and past simultaneously, and in that way the speaker almost becomes her ancestors, blending together with her own life, views, and pain. "I have to think again what it means that I am here, / what it means that this, harsh as it is and without / a name, can swallow me up" (pg 9). "She is a translator of languages / and souls" (pg 29). "She is a translator of bureaucracies. This race passes through / her, ledgers and columns of thirst, notebooks of bitter / feeling" (pg 29). The only way I can really describe this book is a form of prophecy. The speaker is accessing something both within her and outside of her, something sacred and divine that she has been entrusted with, and that she's now entrusting the reader with.

And isn't that the ultimate point of all writing? Taking something sacred, something magical, and entrusting it to the reader? It's up to us to be worthy of that privilege.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found myself wanting to enjoy this poetry - I loved the words and the themes but somehow I couldn't stay connected.
I really love the author's prose but I found the style of poetry felt too wordy.

[Melia Tessel · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my second read through it’s even better than the first time.