Excerpt from her poem From the Poplars

endowed by forces of nature, forces such as forest fire

darkened save the plumed out stack
bowed-out steam
system

evaporation microanatomy
adhesion, stumps

of cell walls end-to-end fibre forms
under the niddle of machine

streaming silver-blue roofs
trains below trains above

upper tacking texture lines
cracked floor of a dry river tracks

trace along side

nation majorities
idyllic sense of security

minorities                 pauseless

respect
picking berries on the side of the road; an assertion of sovereignty

Bio

Cecily Nicholson is the administrator of the artist-run centre Gallery Gachet and has worked since 2000 in the downtown eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. She collaborates with the Joint Effort prison abolitionist group and is a member of the research ethics board for Emily Carr University. Cecily is the author of Triage and From the Poplars, winner of the 2015 Dorothy Livesay prize for poetry.