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The World After Rain

Anne's Poem

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Hardcover (Paper-over-Board, no jacket)
$19.00 US
5.69"W x 8.28"H x 0.52"D   (14.5 x 21.0 x 1.3 cm) | 8 oz (238 g) | 16 per carton
On sale Oct 14, 2025 | 120 Pages | 9780771020063
Sales rights: Canada and Open Mkt

Named a Best Canadian Poetry Book of 2025 by CBC Books • Excerpt included in The Yale Review's Most-Read Poems of 2025 • Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview

“How incandescent the language is, each line emitting light through the membrane of time and anticipated grief. The work has a rigorousness, the poet pushing through the ache of experience from the first to the last word.”—Dionne Brand

In her signature epic vision, Canisia Lubrin distills a radiant elegy for her mother along an interwoven and unresolvable axis of astonishment, belonging as much to history as to today. 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,
Named a Best Canadian Poetry Book of 2025 by CBC Books • Excerpt included in The Yale Review's Most-Read Poems of 2025 • Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview

"How incandescent the language is, each line emitting light through the membrane of time and anticipated grief. The work has a rigorousness, the poet pushing through the ache of experience from the first to the last word."
—Dionne Brand

"Epic. . . . The World After Rain expands our understanding of what elegy can accomplish, demonstrating how personal grief can open onto larger questions of history, diaspora, and survival. In an era when poetry often struggles to address collective trauma, Lubrin offers a model for how the intimate and the political can illuminate each other. . . . [accommodating] the full complexity of mourning while maintaining the emotional precision that transforms private grief into shared understanding."
—Selena Mercuri, The Fiddlehead

“Under Lubrin’s attentive and testing gaze and in her singular voice, the elegy feels at once new and timeless. . . . Lubrin’s attention at once holds the fleetest of moments, brief as the falling of a drop of rain, and the accumulation of personal and cultural histories.”
— Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press
© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
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. View titles by Canisia Lubrin
Available for sale exclusive:
•     Canada

Available for sale non-exclusive:
•     Afghanistan
•     Aland Islands
•     Albania
•     Algeria
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•     Angola
•     Anguilla
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•     Armenia
•     Aruba
•     Austria
•     Azerbaijan
•     Bahrain
•     Belarus
•     Belgium
•     Benin
•     Bhutan
•     Bolivia
•     Bonaire, Saba
•     Bosnia Herzeg.
•     Bouvet Island
•     Brazil
•     Bulgaria
•     Burkina Faso
•     Burundi
•     Cambodia
•     Cameroon
•     Cape Verde
•     Centr.Afr.Rep.
•     Chad
•     Chile
•     China
•     Colombia
•     Comoro Is.
•     Congo
•     Cook Islands
•     Costa Rica
•     Croatia
•     Cuba
•     Curacao
•     Czech Republic
•     Dem. Rep. Congo
•     Denmark
•     Djibouti
•     Dominican Rep.
•     Ecuador
•     Egypt
•     El Salvador
•     Equatorial Gui.
•     Eritrea
•     Estonia
•     Ethiopia
•     Faroe Islands
•     Finland
•     France
•     Fren.Polynesia
•     French Guinea
•     Gabon
•     Georgia
•     Germany
•     Greece
•     Greenland
•     Guadeloupe
•     Guatemala
•     Guinea Republic
•     Guinea-Bissau
•     Haiti
•     Heard/McDon.Isl
•     Honduras
•     Hong Kong
•     Hungary
•     Iceland
•     Indonesia
•     Iran
•     Iraq
•     Israel
•     Italy
•     Ivory Coast
•     Japan
•     Jordan
•     Kazakhstan
•     Kuwait
•     Kyrgyzstan
•     Laos
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•     Lebanon
•     Liberia
•     Libya
•     Liechtenstein
•     Lithuania
•     Luxembourg
•     Macau
•     Macedonia
•     Madagascar
•     Maldives
•     Mali
•     Marshall island
•     Martinique
•     Mauritania
•     Mayotte
•     Mexico
•     Micronesia
•     Moldavia
•     Monaco
•     Mongolia
•     Montenegro
•     Morocco
•     Myanmar
•     Nepal
•     Netherlands
•     New Caledonia
•     Nicaragua
•     Niger
•     Niue
•     Norfolk Island
•     North Korea
•     Norway
•     Oman
•     Palau
•     Palestinian Ter
•     Panama
•     Paraguay
•     Peru
•     Philippines
•     Poland
•     Portugal
•     Qatar
•     Reunion Island
•     Romania
•     Russian Fed.
•     Rwanda
•     Saint Martin
•     San Marino
•     SaoTome Princip
•     Saudi Arabia
•     Senegal
•     Serbia
•     Singapore
•     Sint Maarten
•     Slovakia
•     Slovenia
•     South Korea
•     South Sudan
•     Spain
•     St Barthelemy
•     St.Pier,Miquel.
•     Sth Terr. Franc
•     Sudan
•     Suriname
•     Svalbard
•     Sweden
•     Switzerland
•     Syria
•     Tadschikistan
•     Taiwan
•     Thailand
•     Timor-Leste
•     Togo
•     Tokelau Islands
•     Tunisia
•     Turkey
•     Turkmenistan
•     Ukraine
•     Unit.Arab Emir.
•     Uruguay
•     Uzbekistan
•     Vatican City
•     Venezuela
•     Vietnam
•     Wallis,Futuna
•     West Saharan
•     Western Samoa
•     Yemen

Not available for sale:
•     Antigua/Barbuda
•     Australia
•     Bahamas
•     Bangladesh
•     Barbados
•     Belize
•     Bermuda
•     Botswana
•     Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter
•     Brit.Virgin Is.
•     Brunei
•     Cayman Islands
•     Christmas Islnd
•     Cocos Islands
•     Cyprus
•     Dominica
•     Falkland Islnds
•     Fiji
•     Gambia
•     Ghana
•     Gibraltar
•     Grenada
•     Guam
•     Guernsey
•     Guyana
•     India
•     Ireland
•     Isle of Man
•     Jamaica
•     Jersey
•     Kenya
•     Kiribati
•     Lesotho
•     Malawi
•     Malaysia
•     Malta
•     Mauritius
•     Minor Outl.Ins.
•     Montserrat
•     Mozambique
•     Namibia
•     Nauru
•     New Zealand
•     Nigeria
•     North Mariana
•     Pakistan
•     PapuaNewGuinea
•     Pitcairn Islnds
•     Puerto Rico
•     S. Sandwich Ins
•     Samoa,American
•     Seychelles
•     Sierra Leone
•     Solomon Islands
•     Somalia
•     South Africa
•     Sri Lanka
•     St. Helena
•     St. Lucia
•     St. Vincent
•     St.Chr.,Nevis
•     Swaziland
•     Tanzania
•     Tonga
•     Trinidad,Tobago
•     Turks&Caicos Is
•     Tuvalu
•     US Virgin Is.
•     USA
•     Uganda
•     United Kingdom
•     Vanuatu
•     Zambia
•     Zimbabwe

About

Named a Best Canadian Poetry Book of 2025 by CBC Books • Excerpt included in The Yale Review's Most-Read Poems of 2025 • Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview

“How incandescent the language is, each line emitting light through the membrane of time and anticipated grief. The work has a rigorousness, the poet pushing through the ache of experience from the first to the last word.”—Dionne Brand

In her signature epic vision, Canisia Lubrin distills a radiant elegy for her mother along an interwoven and unresolvable axis of astonishment, belonging as much to history as to today. 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,

Praise

Named a Best Canadian Poetry Book of 2025 by CBC Books • Excerpt included in The Yale Review's Most-Read Poems of 2025 • Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview

"How incandescent the language is, each line emitting light through the membrane of time and anticipated grief. The work has a rigorousness, the poet pushing through the ache of experience from the first to the last word."
—Dionne Brand

"Epic. . . . The World After Rain expands our understanding of what elegy can accomplish, demonstrating how personal grief can open onto larger questions of history, diaspora, and survival. In an era when poetry often struggles to address collective trauma, Lubrin offers a model for how the intimate and the political can illuminate each other. . . . [accommodating] the full complexity of mourning while maintaining the emotional precision that transforms private grief into shared understanding."
—Selena Mercuri, The Fiddlehead

“Under Lubrin’s attentive and testing gaze and in her singular voice, the elegy feels at once new and timeless. . . . Lubrin’s attention at once holds the fleetest of moments, brief as the falling of a drop of rain, and the accumulation of personal and cultural histories.”
— Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press

Author

© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
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. View titles by Canisia Lubrin

Rights

Available for sale exclusive:
•     Canada

Available for sale non-exclusive:
•     Afghanistan
•     Aland Islands
•     Albania
•     Algeria
•     Andorra
•     Angola
•     Anguilla
•     Antarctica
•     Argentina
•     Armenia
•     Aruba
•     Austria
•     Azerbaijan
•     Bahrain
•     Belarus
•     Belgium
•     Benin
•     Bhutan
•     Bolivia
•     Bonaire, Saba
•     Bosnia Herzeg.
•     Bouvet Island
•     Brazil
•     Bulgaria
•     Burkina Faso
•     Burundi
•     Cambodia
•     Cameroon
•     Cape Verde
•     Centr.Afr.Rep.
•     Chad
•     Chile
•     China
•     Colombia
•     Comoro Is.
•     Congo
•     Cook Islands
•     Costa Rica
•     Croatia
•     Cuba
•     Curacao
•     Czech Republic
•     Dem. Rep. Congo
•     Denmark
•     Djibouti
•     Dominican Rep.
•     Ecuador
•     Egypt
•     El Salvador
•     Equatorial Gui.
•     Eritrea
•     Estonia
•     Ethiopia
•     Faroe Islands
•     Finland
•     France
•     Fren.Polynesia
•     French Guinea
•     Gabon
•     Georgia
•     Germany
•     Greece
•     Greenland
•     Guadeloupe
•     Guatemala
•     Guinea Republic
•     Guinea-Bissau
•     Haiti
•     Heard/McDon.Isl
•     Honduras
•     Hong Kong
•     Hungary
•     Iceland
•     Indonesia
•     Iran
•     Iraq
•     Israel
•     Italy
•     Ivory Coast
•     Japan
•     Jordan
•     Kazakhstan
•     Kuwait
•     Kyrgyzstan
•     Laos
•     Latvia
•     Lebanon
•     Liberia
•     Libya
•     Liechtenstein
•     Lithuania
•     Luxembourg
•     Macau
•     Macedonia
•     Madagascar
•     Maldives
•     Mali
•     Marshall island
•     Martinique
•     Mauritania
•     Mayotte
•     Mexico
•     Micronesia
•     Moldavia
•     Monaco
•     Mongolia
•     Montenegro
•     Morocco
•     Myanmar
•     Nepal
•     Netherlands
•     New Caledonia
•     Nicaragua
•     Niger
•     Niue
•     Norfolk Island
•     North Korea
•     Norway
•     Oman
•     Palau
•     Palestinian Ter
•     Panama
•     Paraguay
•     Peru
•     Philippines
•     Poland
•     Portugal
•     Qatar
•     Reunion Island
•     Romania
•     Russian Fed.
•     Rwanda
•     Saint Martin
•     San Marino
•     SaoTome Princip
•     Saudi Arabia
•     Senegal
•     Serbia
•     Singapore
•     Sint Maarten
•     Slovakia
•     Slovenia
•     South Korea
•     South Sudan
•     Spain
•     St Barthelemy
•     St.Pier,Miquel.
•     Sth Terr. Franc
•     Sudan
•     Suriname
•     Svalbard
•     Sweden
•     Switzerland
•     Syria
•     Tadschikistan
•     Taiwan
•     Thailand
•     Timor-Leste
•     Togo
•     Tokelau Islands
•     Tunisia
•     Turkey
•     Turkmenistan
•     Ukraine
•     Unit.Arab Emir.
•     Uruguay
•     Uzbekistan
•     Vatican City
•     Venezuela
•     Vietnam
•     Wallis,Futuna
•     West Saharan
•     Western Samoa
•     Yemen

Not available for sale:
•     Antigua/Barbuda
•     Australia
•     Bahamas
•     Bangladesh
•     Barbados
•     Belize
•     Bermuda
•     Botswana
•     Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter
•     Brit.Virgin Is.
•     Brunei
•     Cayman Islands
•     Christmas Islnd
•     Cocos Islands
•     Cyprus
•     Dominica
•     Falkland Islnds
•     Fiji
•     Gambia
•     Ghana
•     Gibraltar
•     Grenada
•     Guam
•     Guernsey
•     Guyana
•     India
•     Ireland
•     Isle of Man
•     Jamaica
•     Jersey
•     Kenya
•     Kiribati
•     Lesotho
•     Malawi
•     Malaysia
•     Malta
•     Mauritius
•     Minor Outl.Ins.
•     Montserrat
•     Mozambique
•     Namibia
•     Nauru
•     New Zealand
•     Nigeria
•     North Mariana
•     Pakistan
•     PapuaNewGuinea
•     Pitcairn Islnds
•     Puerto Rico
•     S. Sandwich Ins
•     Samoa,American
•     Seychelles
•     Sierra Leone
•     Solomon Islands
•     Somalia
•     South Africa
•     Sri Lanka
•     St. Helena
•     St. Lucia
•     St. Vincent
•     St.Chr.,Nevis
•     Swaziland
•     Tanzania
•     Tonga
•     Trinidad,Tobago
•     Turks&Caicos Is
•     Tuvalu
•     US Virgin Is.
•     USA
•     Uganda
•     United Kingdom
•     Vanuatu
•     Zambia
•     Zimbabwe