“Quell” by Cooper Skjeie

June 20, 2025

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Quell” by Cooper Skjeie. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

Quell

By Cooper Skjeie

a still frame forced fragment ice picked child now offered to annelids by regret and lost time: through fence boards i’ve watched kale grow from the same waste digested and absorbed by a body i held washed and watered just the same the difference: kale will always need me– if these earthworms can’t help at least the leeches will

Copyright © Cooper Skjeie

Previously published in i am what becomes of broken branch (League of Canadian Poets, 2020).

Cooper Skjeie (/shay/) is a writer and teacher of German-Norwegian and Métis ancestry. He earned a Bachelor of Education with Distinction from the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program, has attended residencies at the Banff Centre and Sage Hill Writing Experience, and is completing his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. His poetry has won or been shortlisted for numerous literary magazine contests and has received national acclaim—winning the 2023 Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award, a 2023 Indigenous Voices Award, and a 2024 National Magazine Award. Skjeie lives rurally north of Saskatoon and is a registered citizen of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan. His work is represented by Cody Caetano at CookeMcdermid.

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