Nevertheless

Walking Poems

Gillian Jerome

• Publisher: Nightwood Editions
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780889714120
• eBook ISBN: 9780889714137
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

The long-awaited second collection by award-winning poet Gillian Jerome, about rediscovery and reconnection in the centre of urban Vancouver.?

Nevertheless is a book of walking poems and odes. Poet Gillian Jerome roams into ordinary places inside and outside of the city of Vancouver to find beings and states of being to sing about. This collection is about love, grief, friendship, neighbours, neighbourhoods and aging, but its central question might be, "How do we restore relationships between land and people?" In response, Jerome's poems suggest that we might plant a garden, put one foot in front of the other. "Look about you," George Washington Carver wrote. "Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you."

Personals (Odes)

Poem for Laura

We each married a poet & each by each we

left them. My friend Mary said it’s hard to love a big shot even

harder to leave a big shot— but we did.

Nights we sit up, me grading papers in Vancouver,

you in Toronto watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, both of us eating chips from the bag,

cackling till our guts hurt. We eat late. Read late. Feel

4,382 kilometres closer than the last time we caught up. Crows hide their tiniest

trinkets in our hair. Days unfurl their bright moments: good salads, a seat on the bus, nary

a meeting runneth over— After work, we take our kids out to Chinatown for dumplings.

Wash out the glass containers from lunch. Me talking you talking late

about whatever’s whirling around in our systems. What it feels like to

inhale a new lover. Bit by awesome bit the old stories fade

away—we keep travelling through the days together

swapping what we’ve been reading, podcasts, plans for work, worries

re lawyers, re kids. Stitching new silvery linings through our lives.

In your house by the train tracks, wheels turn, you struggle to sleep so

I sprinkle some fairy dust on your blackish nightie and say “Night, L.

Talk mañana.” Sometimes it takes years for myths to implode. Soon we grow

into perfectly ordinary women building and rebuilding

our lives. Odysseys the reading world will never see.

We sail our ships quietly, rough seas, roughage. Late June,

we toast over iced tea in my kitchen. Dance to Bell Biv DeVoe

till we’re cycling up Main Street to grab falafel & Chardonnay.

Seven years ago, that blackened August, you paid my grocery bills—that year

we grew savvy quick re people with pockets

full of poems, full of poses. Is there a man anywhere

on the godforsaken planet good enough for you? It’s a question worth asking.

There is hardly a thing stronger than a woman who

sits on her porch drinking her own hibiscus tea and eating the beets she grew

from her dirt. Who has rebuilt herself among others, from scratch. Not in the whole vast project.

Poem for My Father

You, not long gone. Spring’s here.

My body finds its slow way outside into the light.

I run around the park. Breathing. I can do that.

Running home, mind opens. World opens.

This morning’s sunlight falls through the slats of the fence.

Petals fall off the rhodo into small piles underneath: half-moon tissue.

I run past the lilac bush breathe in its small mercies.

The cherry blossoms that rang out a month ago announcing themselves quiet as pink elephants fade and fall.

Bereft, the world holds us in its tendernesses: a warm shawl of sunlight the smell of cherry blossoms after a long winter without enough touch.

Shark Poem

I like you in the way that I like to sit beneath bridges and watch boats cross the water.

Sometimes I like to think about being beneath a boat as it vees the water

until it’s a wake—O...

Table of contents

• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Reveries of a Walker Walking Among Others
• Personals (Odes)
• Desire Lines
• Notes on the Poems
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author