Accidents

Accidents

Poetry

Purchase

About the book

In Accidents, her third collection of poems, Genni Gunn takes us on a roller coaster ride through past and present in different continents, to explore the various upheavals that alter our lives. From her birthplace in Trieste, where she attempts to unravel the mysterious lives of her parents; to Vancouver with its urban alienation and attraction; to Burma, where disruptions are a way of life under the Generals. Along the way, she treats us to a sardonic and sometimes appalling history of masks, and of spontaneous combustion. Poem by poem, Gunn examines the emotional, political, and geological upheaval that inevitably shape us as family members, as lovers, and as citizens, and the humble talismans we carry as reminders of the past. Heartbreak and humour leaven and disrupt these poems in equal measure, as does love.

About the author

Gunn, Genni

Genni Gunn is an author, musician and translator. Born in Trieste, she came to Canada as a child. She has published twelve books: three novels -- Solitaria (longlisted for the Giller Prize 2011), Tracing Iris (made into a film, The Riverbank), and Thrice Upon a Time (finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize); three short story collections -- Permanent Tourists, Hungers and On the Road; three poetry collections -- Faceless, Mating in Captivity (finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award), and Accidents; and a collection of personal essays, TRACKS: Journeys in Time and Place. As well, she has translated from Italian three collections of poems by two renowned Italian authors: Devour Me Too (finalist for the John Glassco Translation Prize) and Traveling in the Gait of a Fox (finalist for the Premio Internazionale Diego Valeri for Literary Translation) by Dacia Maraini, and Text Me by Corrado Calabrò. Two of Gunn’s books have been translated into Italian and Dutch.

As well as books, she has written an opera libretto, Alternate Visions, produced by Chants Libres in 2007 (music by John Oliver), and projected in a simulcast at The Western Front in Vancouver; her poem, "Hot Summer Nights" has been turned into classical vocal music by John Oliver, and performed internationally. Before she turned to writing full-time, Gunn toured Canada extensively with a variety of bands (bass guitar, piano and vocals). Since then, she has performed at hundreds of readings and writers’ festivals. Gunn has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.

Excerpt

from Vietnam Journal, 2010

This paper, pen, ink
subtract one thing
the tree
a bridge over rapids
the fish spawning upstream
the bulrushes crushed
the riverbed flattened into an arid plain
where desert tortoises burrow
into rock shelters
in tunnels dug into the earth.
Subtract the place
where the tree fell
the deaths in its path
the underbrush choked
life subterranean now
trapped in a shaft
or scurrying like rats
in the Cu Chi tunnels
three storeys beneath
the earth. Young men’s blood
lingering in the leaves

From Genni Gunn

Reviews

The first accident is birth followed by the first absence as this poet begins to mend the familiar faces in broken windows and broken crockery, to complete unfinished portraits and fill in the hairline cracks in memory, as, quoting Mark… >>

— Linda Rogers The British Columbia Review


Join us on Facebook Facebook Follow us on Twitter Twitter

up Back to top