Antonyms for Daughter [Paperback]

Antonyms for Daughter, Jenny Boychuk’s poetry debut, addresses a harrowing subject: the loss of the poet’s mother to addiction. Deploying a range of forms and techniques astonishing in a first collection, Boychuk creates unsparing scenes of their complicated life together. Poem after poem attempts to wring clarity from memories ripe with trauma and love, as Boychuk questions whether it is possible for a child to ever extricate herself from an abusive parent—to become, as it were, a living “antonym” of a painful family legacy. A booklength loss-lyric of vivid beauty,Antonyms for Daughteris a singular example of grief transformed into art.

Jenny Boychukwas born in New Westminster, British Columbia, and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her poems and essays have appeared inThe Walrus,CBC Books,Best New Poets 2016,The Malahat Review,The Fiddlehead,,Grain,The New Quarterly,PRISM international, among other publications. In 2018, she won theCopper NickelEditors’ Prize in Poetry. She is also the winner of the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.