Copyright © Andreae Callanan, 2021
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FIRST EDITION
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The debt : poems / Andreae Callanan.
Names: Callanan, Andreae, 1977- author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210122528 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210122587 | ISBN 9781771964173 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771964180 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8605.A45 D43 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
Edited by Luke Hathaway
Copyedited by Emily Donaldson
Cover and interior illustration: “Water Carrier I” by Diana Daly. Used by permission of the artist.
Text and cover designed by Christina Angeli
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA
FOR SUSIE
Contents
Carousel at the Christmas market, Brussels
Fall fiscal update, with damsons
The model train is undergoing repairs
Promise
These are the rumours: rapturous
clash of sea-stones heaving
under the chill collapse
and pull of tide to shore, moss
padding the shaded forest
floor in deepest green shot
through with chartreuse
strands, the marshes inlaid
with autumn fruit. Time-carved
cathedrals of cliff,
congregations of gannets.
How many colours
pulse in a single shard
of Labrador feldspar? What
is the sound of twenty thousand
seabirds calling through silken
fog?
Promise me it isn’t all just wild
and