Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt introduces the reader to the lyric power and political urgency of the poetry of Di Brandt, providing an overview of her poetry written during a prolific and revolutionary twenty-year period.

Beginning with her early poetic inquiries into the dynamics of gender, religion, and the politics of language, Brandt examines the use and abuse of power as a cultural issue, emphasizing cross-cultural and domestic relationships. Particularly engaged with questions of motherhood, the land, violence and reparation, feminism, and spirituality, Brandt explores ecopoetics, an ecology of poetry, as a possible antidote to the cultural despair of the twenty-first century.

Editor Tanis MacDonald's introduction outlines the major movements of Brandt's work, emphasizing the relationship of language to power and the value of a dissenting voice in a forceful cultural poetics. An afterword by Brandt completes the volume.

Di Brandt has received numerous awards for her poetry, including the CAA National Poetry Prize, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at Brandon University.

Table of Contents for
Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt, selected with an introduction by Tanis MacDonald

Foreword | Neil Besner

Biographical Note

Introduction | Tanis MacDonald

when i was five

but what do you think my father says

say to yourself each time

my mother found herself one late summer

missionary position (1)

missionary position (5)

mother why didnt you tell me this

you prepare a banquet in your mind

since we cannot meet on father ground

nonresistance, or love Mennonite style

prairie hymn

why she can't write the mother

let me tell you, dear reader

completely seduced

what de Englische

the letters i wrote & didn't

poem for a guy who's

death is a good argument

today i spit out God & Jesus

& it amuses us to think

Jerusalem, the golden, city of my dreams

there are no words in me for Gaza

how long does it take to forget a murder

here, in the desert

how badly she wants peace

> 1

> 2

Here at the heart of the ravaged heart

Dog days in Maribor: Anti (electric) ghazals

Not ungrateful for the attempt at proper

Afterword: You pray for the rare flower to appear | Di Brandt

Acknowledgements