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"This is a story, writes Luke Hathaway, of transformation. It is a death. It is a birth. / Birth, of course, is very terrible: what can survive it? His fourth collection, and first since Years, Months, and Days, a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2018, The Affirmations is a work of trans poetics in the most radical sense. Begun in motherhood, in an experience of birth as an experience of affirmation, and continued through Hathaway's transition, The Affirmations is a rerelationing with self and other, elder and myth. It's a book about what happened when Hathaway fell in love--and about what happened when love shot the messenger."--
About the author
Luke Hathaway is a trans poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He has been before now at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea. His book
Years, Months, and Days was named a best book of 2018 in the
New York Times. He mentors new librettists as a faculty member in the Amadeus Choir’s Choral Composition Lab, and makes music with Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA.
Summary
Shortlisted for the 2023 J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award • Winner of the 2021 Confederation Poets Prize • One of The Times' Best Poetry Books of 2022 • A CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022 • Nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award for Poetry
"...a trans-mystical work of love and change..."—Ali Blythe, author of Hymnswitch
The mystics who coined the phrase ‘the way of affirmation’ understood the apocalyptic nature of the word yes, the way it can lead out of one life and into another. Moving among the languages of Christian conversion, Classical metamorphosis, seasonal transformation, and gender transition, Luke Hathaway tells the story of the love that rewired his being, asking each of us to experience the transfiguration that can follow upon saying yes—with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, with all one’s strength ... and with all one’s body, too.
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Praise for The Affirmations
"Hathaway’s poetry collection arrives at just the right time. The Affirmations’ silvery, dew-laced spiderweb of intricacy and intimacy connect us simultaneously to myth, futurism and matters of the heart."
—The Tyee
"The Affirmations evocatively asks us to examine this imperfect world in a way that leaves us vulnerable with each other and the earth, alongside Luke."
—Shalan Joudry, author of Elapultiek
‘Like his biblical namesake, [Luke Hathaway] offers his own accounting, and so heralds a trans-mystical work of love and change. Driven equally by philia, eros and agape, his poetry pushes for more: more darkness, so you’ll attend your light; more light, so you’ll attend your darkness."
—Ali Blythe, author of Hymnswitch
Praise for Years, Months, and Days
“[Years, Months, and Days] is carried by Jernigan’s obvious respect for her sponsoring material and by her superb ear.”
—New York Times
“Exquisite ... deeply resonant ... There’s often a metaphysical cast to her forthright observations, which makes them both evocative and poignant.”
—Toronto Star
“[This] small and beautiful book should be on your bedside table even if it is as heaped as mine. Just 4” by 5” and fewer than 70 pages, the book consists of untitled, spare, and simply-worded poems which evoke the cycles of life, the seasons, and human longing for meaning and connection. The poems expand in your head, opening your mind to matters beyond the day-to-day.”
—Arc Poetry Magazine
