By Jen Currin
Powered by lush imagery and lyricism, the poems in The Sleep of Four Cities use the city as a metaphor for the complexity of self. This book invites the reader to take a journey through multiple cities—cities of memory, of desire, of imagination, of discovery, of loss—with only the map of language as a guide. The cities in this book are not always easily unlocked—they are at once tangible and invisible; they exist both inside and outside the speakers of the poems. Throughout the book, these speakers seek to discover what is within their grasp and what, like water, will slip through their fingers.
Jen Currin lives on unceded Coast Salish land (New Westminster, BC) and has published four collections of poetry, including The Inquisition Yours, which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry; and School (2014), which was a finalist for three awards. Jen’s poems and stories have been published in many journals and anthologies. An instructor of creative writing at Kwantlen University, Jen also teaches community workshops and grows vegetables in her community garden plot.
