Aisha Sasha John

"John is brilliant at communicating. She's also really funny. Poems don't get more direct and precise and unforgettable than this." --National Post The highly anticipated new collection from Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Aisha Sasha John.

A new collection ablaze with urgency and radiant inquiry from a 2015 finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry A demand and promise; an obligation and challenge; a protest and call: I have to live. Juiced on the ecstasy of self-belief: I have to live. A burgeoning erotics of psychic boldness: I have to live. In which sensitivity is recognized as wealth: I have to live. Trumpeting the forensic authority of the heart: I have to live. This is original ancient poetry. It fashions a universe from its mouth.

Following the successful reception of her first book, The Shining Material, comes Aisha Sasha John's THOU -- a powerful collection of two long, narrative poems exploring the social space that exists between the self and others. Using the language that connects these two states of being, THOU investigates the idea of "you" -- what it is and what it means to say "you," the stories we make of our own multiple "yous," and by extension, the "you" an author can make of her own book. Building on the emotionally charged language of John's previous work, THOU will tantalize readers' senses, and will provoke comparisons to such acclaimed poets as Anne Carson (especially Glass, Irony and God) and Alice Notley.

The Shining Material is about saying I. Disrupt, interrupt, challenge I? How boring. How violent. Better/instead/also cradle-interrogate I; to a steaming, exfoliating shining, hold I: the curve at the top of I, the curve at the base of I, the long shaft I oh I. Sigh: I, you get a lot of shit, so in The Shining Material, the poet speaks you meekly, hoarsely, disobediently: witness Aisha Sasha John braid self-portrature, ekphrasis, and her own brand of psalm to produce an experience much like falling down the stairs and it helping.