SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 10
of expression. As readers, we are given the chance to witness that exchange as it unfolds
and extend it into our own creative circles and practices.
Poetry Introduction
We hope you enjoy eavesdropping,
Janelle Gray
Managing Editor, Craft and Theory
Heidi Sawitzke
Assistant Managing Editor, Craft and Theory
A poem is the self resisting erasure through language. There are many forms of
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religious trauma, and physical abuse.
The poem, which won SQN’s Prize in Poetry, invites questions about living with the
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silencing us? How, ultimately, can we move past them?
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more than remembrances of the past. They grapple with memory, refusing to ignore it or
forget.
Shared memory becomes witness. Witness becomes an act of agency, allowing the
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who is free from the violence that etched its path, regardless of the consequences.
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competition, treats memory not as recollection but as return:
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not just as a shadow or a dream,
but as the absence of loneliness.
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In contrast, memory arrives at an unexpected moment as in Meredith Olsson’s poem,
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a moment of remembered tenderness:
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again towards me, holding
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because they remind you
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moments with your grandfather,
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Nine But Who Refused To Sign Any Adoption Papers, So My Mother Signed Her Own
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