The World After Rain | Anne's Poem | Canisia Lubrin | Winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2026

Grief, tender and searing, is the channel through which the poet refracts the realm of contemporary life to reveal the blistering paradox of its private and public entanglements.

This is poetry of haunting gravity and resonance, with meditations on love, time, and loss, at once meticulously far-seeing, interior, and inexpressible.

woman from fine-print time, disclose to the world:

the forecast of our noontime births outdoors; how I distrust

every form of authority, chiefly my own astonishment

this poisoned wish is why I love, I bow to deserts,

these claychildren of forests everywhere

I love the rain, this is no secret, I love the solar wind;

hold their elliptical life in the wasteland of our third mouths

where flowers are invisible and bones are sanded and amusing,

and every heliopause cloud senses our head, how we astonish

our memories vining where no shade is enough,

since many who’ll feed me will refuse me their names,

and good, who knows what bargains I would make

with their meanings, more bundles of thyme . . .

tournaments of family recipes with you at my question,

CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Governor General’s Literary Award, Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Fraser University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at the University of Toronto. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell Prize for poetry, and the Globe and Mail named her Poet of the Year. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction, and includes stories listed for the Journey Prize (2019, 2020), Toronto Book Award (2018) and the Shirley Jackson Award (2021). Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.