The Untranslatable I

By Roxanna Bennett

Shortlisted for Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award for Poetry, and winner of the Raymond Souster Award, try Award winning book with Gordon Hill Press, Roxanna Bennett's The Untranslatable I builds on Roxanna's acute sense of form and cripping of myth by establishing a more reflective, heartbreaking voice that asks, "Was I chosen? Is this a gift or a curse?" and provides answers not as prescribed path or cure, but as beautiful song.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon Hill Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781774220191

Roxanna Bennett

The disabled poem-making entity known as Roxanna Bennett gratefully resides on Indigenous land. They are the author of The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021) and the award-winning Unmeaningable(Gordon Hill Press, 2019).

Book preview

Babelfish Key: Wherever You Go, There You Are

In Oxford on OxyContin, in Ajax

on Ativan, in Paris on Percocets,

in Cobourg on Clonazepam, in Switzerland

on Seroquel, in Scarborough on Serentil,

Berlin a blur of Baclofen & Nabilone,

Old Town absinthe, Abilify & absence,

Montreal’s Mirtazapine, codeine & callous,

Strasbourg a parking lot of Pepto-Bismol

& panic. & the hospital? A labyrinth of

protocol & damage where Code White is

a euphemism for "your pain is a tidal wave

our system can’t manage." Home was

that floor, that skin, that skeleton, now it is

aether, vibration, air & the ocean, O & the ocean.

Travel Diary: From Sappho to Suffrage

Shame requires the eyes of others. — Anne Carson

Sappho, your fragment some say glassed-in,

       like the last dodo in the Pitt Rivers Museum,

              one foot, a head, replica skeleton.

Across the street at the Bodleian

       language is chained, flash-frozen.

              Do we, can we, change reaction?

In Oxford as elsewhere I’m alien,

       slurring undrunk, stumbling, strange

              without dog, chair, cane, a token

to answer the unspoken question.

       What’s a suffragette, schoolchildren

              ask, handwritten pages of Frankenstein

splayed open like a secret organ.

       Sappho, Shelley’s prescience

              foresaw our monstrousness, beds

filled with bodies deemed unfit,

       warehoused for profit, convenience,

              after pitchforks & windmills, the next

logical step. Set us free. We can vote

       if the building is barrier-free. What’s sacred?

              adults ask. Instagram headdresses, amulets.

Let me be so seen, even as an attraction,

       one being’s body is another being’s ransom.

              Sappho, I am too tired to burn.

After struggling the chalk spine of the Uffington

       Horse, sky a Symbolist painting of heaven,

              ludicrous clouds puff-cheeked, golden,

mirrored the sheep lumping the horizon,

       everything perfect but me, I cried again,

              but quietly, to keep my shame hidden.

Unseen, I creep, crawling not a sociable option.

       Sappho, where is Anne Carson on the spectrum

              or am I projecting divergence on the old cave wall?

Purplefish Key: The Lost Dodo

       Is Anne Carson autistic or am I

projecting understanding & if you

       find that offensive—why? Did you think

sanism was the only narrative. Or did you