• Winner of the 2020 Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize

The title of Jennifer Houle’s second collection, Virga, refers to a cloud formation often seen on the horizon, when rain begins to fall but evaporates before reaching the ground, only to fall again when the time is right. Likewise, the poems gathered here, written over a period of roughly twenty years, between the ages of 20 and 40 – many revised with a slightly wiser eye— explore what it means to develop an identity while continuously regrouping, reformulating oneself, reacting to prevailing conditions, and retaining autonomy in a sea of “rhythmic lies and half-truths.” Through the medium of poetry, Houle converses with her younger self, performing a kind of rescue job, bridging years through poetic reflection.

Unapologetic, and shot through lore, Virga investigates the tensions, inner and outer, that work to shape identity. Sensual, driven, and pragmatic, the poems insist that we “fall to rise,” and address the desires - romantic, erotic, familial, and socio-political - that transform us. Like rain held in abeyance, these poems were waiting for their time, and gathered together create a compelling, distinctly feminine and feminist meditation on maturing womanhood. Personal lyrics are set against the stories and mythologies of female characters who fell (or dove) from their stars, into unfamiliar worlds, including meditations on the Lost Pleaid, Dorothy after her sojourn in Oz, and the Greek goddesses Asteria and Astraea.

By turns dark, and infused with longing and fruitful uncertainty, the poems persist in questioning the forces that shape who we are, and the stories, symbols, and ideas we turn to for guidance as we wilfully create ourselves.

Virga

Malum consilium quod mutari non potest.
It’s a bad plan that can’t be changed.

Relief to see the rain changing its mind,
forced to think again by circumstance,
to lash the distant treeline with its rods

of varied slates on ash, a striking
tinct of want, scrawled in blurry slashes,
building its potential till it cannot

be held back. Virgule. Remember
what it means to wait. Especially
at dawn, when all is verge, birdsong

nudging consciousness. Longing,
half-awake, we resist fullness,
knowing it will mean curtailing dream

and warmth let go for good, as once
out into day, our feet will touch ground,
changing us. Sudden storms may

turn us right around, the chilling drop
of some cold revelation send us back
to go within before we leap anew.

My indignant sisters said: don’t go,
you idiot. You don’t need us to tell you

what will happen. We need you here to help
with things, besides - our work, the fountains,

father in his weariness, mother losing time.
You were always selfish, scribbling

impertinent questions to sky gods
while nebulae boiled over, leaving

gouache and scales to us. First,
you should learn to keep your room.

Keep even one star lit.

But I had seen a woman meet a man
in a dim, stone corridor, light bulb

swaying, hair mussed, loose tee
off the shoulder, glittering straps

and collarbone, oculi and angles,
fingers, tongues. Resurgent

hunger. Silence that knew well
it was a waste of breath to ask.

A world of cold streets, colder
offices, icicles suspended

from exhaust pipes, windshields
layered with hard snow. A man

who’d chip away to make it places
he did not care if he got, hunched

over sketched mountaintops he did not know he drew.

He’d go for walks alone and talk
to no one, keep out of the crowds

and leave clubs early, bored,
in no kind of a mood for his own lies.

*

Down

a wet
rope-

ladder. Gut
braided with hemp

and fishing line,
scarves

clotted with clay,
oil, blood,

the long, wet
hair of heroines

gone missing,
drowned,

snagged in sisal,
jute,

swan feather
and quail plume.

Stubbed toes sliding
into pulp and lovers’

knots, down
the gnarled serpents,

slick with moss,
into muscled body,

into storms of words
and names, a mess

of codes,
coordinates,

lists, maps,
and personal

numbers.