TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED
I AM MY OWN METER, ME
BECAUSE I HAVE MADE MYSELF IN MY OWN IMAGE (MOSTLY)
BECAUSE I HAVE MADE MYSELF IN MY OWN IMAGE
MOSTLY
AT THE CENTER OF MY FAITH IS WEEPING
TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED
Aisha Sasha John
May 2021
Written primarily over the course of four months in the fall of 2018, when Aisha Sasha John spent time in her native Vancouver, TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED sees the poet reckoning with narrative in the wake of returning to a place at once familiar and strange: “The other name for this work is DAUGHTERHOOD. What if instead of shaming your parents about their need to grow up, you went on ahead and did it yourself? I used the money I got from being shortlisted for this big poetry prize to spend what would become four months in Vancouver. I went to impose my will on the earth: to be secretary to my mom on a personal business matter. It was entirely my idea. I lived in three different sublets, was so confused, wished for something to fix me. I thought ok I’ll write a novel—or, like, the story of the day—so as to feel organized by occurrences. I did an Event at every university in the area. Centrally I was confronted with growth as a function of daughterhood. My parents lived separately in the suburban townhouse where I spent my adolescence and from which I was banned. Also they lived in a castle of my delusion as perpetual caterpillars—on the verge of transfiguring into the butterfly of new people, a change to be initiated by my careful and robust articulation of their flaws. My lucidity would save them and me; my intelligence would redeem us. I went to Vancouver I guess to more closely consider my exile. It was terrible: a beautiful time.”
About the Author
Aisha Sasha John‘s medium is energy. A poet and choreographer, Aisha is the author of I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart), finalist for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, THOU (Book*hug), finalist for the 2015 Trillium Book Award, and TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED (UDP). Aisha was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto (Scarborough) in 2018 and served as guest faculty for the 2019 Writing Studio residency program at The Banff Centre. Aisha is also the 2019-2022 Dancemakers’ Resident Artist—in 2021 she will commence research on an ensemble work DIANA ROSS DREAM. Her solo work the aisha of is premiered at the Whitney Museum in 2017.
Praise
With masterful clarity, Aisha Sasha John transforms that archetypal tale of “the return home” into a capsule of sensations that is so contemporary and alive. I loved this book.
Sheila Heti
Climb Aisha Sasha John's cliff and meet her energetic catalogue of daily life in the ruins of a disquieting world. John's cliff is language for recovering the ecstatic from the heights and depths of collapse. When a poet finds levity in the deadweight of hard revelations, with her signature wit and her eye scanning every direction from the summit, you go wherever she whispers toward.
Canisia Lubrin
Praise for Previous Work
Aisha Sasha John's poetry practises a form of radical autobiography through declaration.
David B. Hobbs in The Globe and Mail
John’s work dances in the necessary agnosticism that comes from knowing “anything at all;” its uncertainty originates in confidence rather than doubt […] John reclaims the tacit knowledge of the body; the spirit does not just navigate the body, “The spirit / is the body.” John’s work, fully carnal and holy, involves the waking body. It necessitates lack of control. It’s obsessed with beginnings, with thresholds, with the mysterious “destiny / beyond this hallway.” Its heaven is met “in your company. / And yours. / And yours. / … / And also / Yours hi.” The text explodes not as fragment but as web: it’s sticky. You are invited.
Sarah Burgoyne on I have to live.
Righteous and ruminative, philosophically deft as they are lyrically assured, Aisha Sasha John’s suites comprise a real statement of poetry not as a formal means but as a lifeform, and correspondingly, of life as a poem, scarcely to be contained.
Cam Scott on I have to live.
In the News
Publication Details
Chapbook
Hand-bound. 48 pp, 6 x 5 in
Publication Date: May 01 2021
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)