On the Invention of the Seasons by Annick MacAskill

January 9, 2023
Poem title: On the invention of the seasons Poet name: Annick MacAskill Poem: You can’t blame that part on the heavens &/or hell For Hades hath no such fury Nor Jove But a woman can do anything in her pain If she had to lose so the world would lose First she tore at her hair She beat her breast Then she turned her rage to the black soil itself & to the sheep like tufts of cloud & the Sicilian shepherds w/ their felt caps They say she broke the plows w/ her own hands That in her sorrow the mother became the blight End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Annick MacAskill Previously published Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022) and Riddle Fence (2022). Annick MacAskill is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including Shadow Blight, which was published by Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2022. Her poems have appeared in journals across Canada and abroad and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology series. She has been selected as a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the CBC Poetry Prize, the Arc Poem of the Year Award, and an Atlantic Book Award, among other honours. MacAskill also recently served as Arc’s 2021-2022 Poet-in-Residence. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. annickmacaskill.com