From the Mouth by Rachel Lachmansingh

Victoria writer Rachel Lachmansingh has made the2022CBC PoetryPrize shortlistforFrom the Mouth.

She will receive $1,000 fromtheCanada Council for the Artsand herwork has beenpublished onCBC Books.

The winner of the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize will be announced on Nov. 24. They will receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand will attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity.

Lachmansingh is a Guyanese Canadian writer from Toronto. She's been published in Minola Review, Grain, the Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, The Puritanand elsewhere.She is currently pursuing her BA in creative writing at the University of Victoria. Lachmansingh was alsolonglisted for the 2022 CBC Short Story PrizeforThe Window of a Stranger's House.

Lachmansinghwrote the poems in From the Mouth to connect with her great-great-grandmother, she told CBC Books.

My poems were a means to connect with my great-great-grandmother, an Arawak woman whose stories I've been told since I was a child.- Rachel Lachmansingh

"I'm the daughter of two Guyanese immigrants and have Arawak lineage on my mother's side. I'm a mixed-race person who was born in Canada, which means I sometimes struggle to feel directly connected to my ancestors," she said.

"My poems were a means to connect with my great-great-grandmother, an Arawak woman whose stories I've been told since I was a child. However, access to the language itself online is quite limited; my poems reflect what accepting that felt like at the time."

You can read From the Mouthbelow.

DEATH OF A LANGUAGE

Find a
casket
something modest
you know
only a handful
of people spoke
people's talk.
Gather Arawak
from Grandma Platie's
mouth until
you realize
she has
no
words to give.

Scoop
the only nouns
Wikipedia provides you
into a palm:
moon
sky
sun
heart
grandmother,
and don't
ask
why they disappear
in the lines.
Trade da-kythy
for
my grandmother, a
frail woman who
leans on her son
in one
photograph
and in another,
luminesces in
the sun. There
is no word
for luminesce
in Arawak
that you
can
scavenge. Bury
a desire
to learn
how your
ancestors
said
I love you.
Their language
is dying
and dying
means morphing
asa into hassar
without
asking when new
letters appeared.
When desperate,
wrap verbs
in snapped
cassava bread. Spit
it all out. Don't
grieve
wasted
food
remember
wasting is an action
just as much as
forgetting.

On the internet, my great great grandmother's language

yields no great matches
in my search for God.
Google says:
try using words that might appear
on the page. For example,
'cake recipes' instead of 'how to
make a cake'. I search for 'prayer'
'please' 'Arawak'
enter. Two results
in (0.41 seconds) get me a did you mean
no.

In my poems, I make up rivers
my great great grandmother never visited. Maybe
she walked ankle-deep into ochre water
and washed her hair. Maybe
she floated on her back, the sun clipping
her face, and knew how to say its true
name. In my poems, I pretend
she lived in a home hemmed
by palm trees and ate mangos
to the seed. I did not know
her name until last
week.

From Google: the Arawak word
for armadillo.
I save it to my favourites, another vague
PDF I'll use in search of Platilda. I write
poetry hoping I'll sift her out of consonants. That one day
she'll meet my reflection in a clouded mirror
and mouth a language I can't hear,
and that she never spoke. That one day
I'll confirm iwa (noun) is the Arawak word for star
and also
year. That one day I will no longer
think of my mouth with no sound
coming out.

Read the other finalists

• To the Astronaut Who Hopes Life on Another Planet Will Be More Bearableby Brad Aaron Modlin (Guelph, Ont.)
• Mouth Prayersby Luka Poljak(Vancouver)
• Grief whiteby Kerry Ryan (Winnipeg)
• Spell World Backwardsby Bren Simmers (Charlottetown)

About the 2022CBC PoetryPrize

The winner of the 2022CBC PoetryPrizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their work published onCBC Booksand attend a two-week writing residency at theBanff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their work published onCBC Books.

The 2023CBC Nonfiction Prizewill open in January. The 2023CBC Poetry Prizewill open in April.