Shortlisted for the 2024 Pat Lowther Memorial Award
Shortlisted for the 2024 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
The islands of an archipelago are isolated above sea level but attached underwater; connected yet separate. archipelago, the debut poetry collection from Laila Malik, traces fragments of family, becoming and unbecoming against the shifting shorelines of loss, multigenerational migration, and (un)belonging.
Malik's lyrical poems intertwine histories of exile and ecological devastation. Beginning with a coming of age in the 80s and 90s between Canada, the Arabian Gulf, East Africa and Kashmir, they subvert conventions of lineage, instead drawing on the truths of inter-ethnic histories amidst sparse landscapes of deserts, oceans, and mountains. They question why the only certainties of "home" are urgency and impossibility.
At its core, archipelago is a letter to the daughters who come before and after, a quiet disclosure of barbed ancestral legacies that only come into focus through poetry.
Table of Contents:
prologue: all your grandmothers have stopped cooking1 pre-cambrianacacia honeythe organic properties of sandjust kids going homecutlerycharred graingrain II2 petroleum byproductsthe first gulf warwe ignored the 5000 year old temple ruins kafala vanishing axesmajnun3 half-life of exileriteswrong bonesfajr is the loneliest numberzero bridgehidden lines letter to my stardust sisterhow to season a turkey4: kufic the widow’s inventory still the heartbaby sharkurducrooked elbowsepilogue: irreconciliationnotesacknowledgements
About the Author :
LAILA MALIK is a desisporic settler and writer living in Adobigok, traditional land of Indigenous communities that include the Anishinaabe, Seneca, Mohawk Haudenosaunee, and Wendat. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines and journals, including Contemporary Verse 2, Canthius, The New Quarterly, Ricepaper, Qwerty, Room, Sukoon, The Bangalore Review, and Archetype. Malik's essays have been longlisted for four different creative nonfiction contests and she was a fellow at the Banff Centre for Creative Arts in 2021. Her debut collection archipelago was included in CBC's Spring 2023 Poetry Collections to Watch For.
Review :
“In her evocative debut collection, Laila Malik draws on memory, not only personal recollection but ancestral and cultural heritage.” —Toronto Star
“In her debut collection, archipelago, Laila Malik considers un-belonging as a way of being.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Malik’s poems carry the weight of unearthed treasures, ancient fragments of wisdom that researchers might devote their careers to piecing together. It is the deft juxtaposition between the ‘you’ and the ‘I’ and Malik’s culturally specific language that makes some poems, like ‘crooked elbows,’ so enthralling.” —Zoe Binder, ZYZZYVA
