Trinity Street: Poems

By Jen Currin

Heartsick, reverent, irreverent, and quietly political, Trinity Street is the much-anticipated fifth collection from poet Jen Currin, winner of the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda finalist. 

While Trinity Street is in fact an actual street in Vancouver, it is also the site of an imaginary garden and imperfect utopia in the title poem of this new collection. Currin’s poems weave together the meditative and the disruptive, the queer and quotidian, and the worlds of the dead and the living. Connections are made through prayer and protest; friendships are forged on a planet challenged by climate crisis, collective grief, and the perils of late capitalism. 

These poems vibrate with unexpected shifts and precise, startling imagery, the touchstones of a poet whose work critics have described as “thrilling,” “emotionally evocative,” and “revelatory.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781487011635

Jen Currin

JEN CURRIN is the author of seven books, including Hider/Seeker: Stories, which won a Canadian Independent Book Award and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book, and The Inquisition Yours, which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award and was a Lambda finalist. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, on the traditional territories of the Multnomah, Chinook, Clackamas, and other tribes, Currin studied with Martín Espada and John Ashbery before moving to Canada in 2002. They live in New Westminster, BC, on unceded Qayqayt, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, and Musqueam territories and teach creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Book preview

Cover: Trinity Street, poems, by Jen Currin. A photo of a park bench at night, lit up by a light source off-camera. The light also hits the bright green grass surrounding the bench, and a tree on the far left side. Even the trunk appears illuminated in green from the grass reflecting light. Trees and bushes to the right of the bench appear in the shadows. Far in the distance, city lights are just barely visible.

Trinity

Street

poems

Jen Currin

Copyright © 2023 Jen Currin

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Published in Canada in 2023 and the USA in 2023 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

houseofanansi.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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House of Anansi Press is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher.

The ebook version of this book meets stringent accessibility standards and is available to readers with print disabilities. 

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Trinity Street / Jen Currin.

Names: Currin, Jen, 1972- author.

Description: Poems.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220445214 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220445230 |

ISBN 9781487011628 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487011635 (EPUB)

Classification: LCC PS8605.U77 T75 2023 | DDC C811/.6—dc23

Book design: Alysia Shewchuk

Ebook design: Nicole Lambe

House of Anansi Press is grateful for the privilege to work on and create from the Traditional Territory

of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee,

as well as the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

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Logos: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada

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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

but god moves to the end

of our sentences

— Robin Blaser

for Karen

The Convention Is Not Over

From Surrey to Commercial Drive

I was lucky; I caught the bus quickly.

It lurched; I tripped.

My neighbour and I shared an intimacy.

Reading is dangerous; I’d better be ready.

Body an argument; how we are garmented.

Quickly caught the boss: told her two

more books I’d soon finish.

Two more: I had to stop reading.

This poetry lucks me.

Stole an apple from your house

but only to take it to my house

to slice for your breakfast.

A pigeon’s wing feathers

my hair as I walk

to the restaurant to meet a friend

who says he wants to take fewer

leaps in his poems, to stick a little

longer with one thing. The leaping

has become too easy.

The bus driver is maybe new, maybe

trying to tame the bus.

It isn’t working.

This poetry