Jenny boychuk
Jenny Boychuk is a poet, writer, and teacher. Her debut poetry collection, Antonyms for Daughter (Véhicule Press, 2021) won the 2022 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the BC & Yukon Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, among others.Her poems and essays have appeared in The Walrus, CBC Books, Best New Poets 2016, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, The New Quarterly, PRISM international, among other publications. She is also the winner of the 2019 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her personal essay, "Slow Violence."Jenny holds a BA from the University of Victoria's Department of Writing, as well as an MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She currently lives in British Columbia, where she is at work at a novel and a memoir.
Antonyms for daughter
SIGNAL EDITIONS | Véhicule Press 2021
From the publisher:
Antonyms for Daughter, Jenny Boychuk’s poetry debut, addresses a harrowing subject: the loss of the poet’s mother to substance use. 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 Daughter is a singular example of grief transformed into art.
Winner – 2022 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry
Finalist – Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Shortlist – 2021 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
Longlist – Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
reviews
"Heart-wrenching yet hard-eyed, Jenny Boychuk's Antonyms for Daughter is a memorable debut collection. Its unflinching style recalls Anne Sexton's poetry, or Joan Didion's capacity to contain unbearable emotion under a polished surface, rendering the subject of grief even more devastating through restraint. [...] This elegantly crafted book attempts to say 'good-bye to her voice and her fury,' and in so doing leaves us with a luminous contribution to the literature on loss."
—Evelyn Lau, 2022 Fred Cogswell Award Judge
"Intimate and nuanced, this collection mirrors the complicated nature of the relationship to which it is dedicated. Through expert skill and a steady gaze, Boychuk has crafted a collection of poems that stay with us long after we have closed the book."
—Stella Cali, PRISM international
"Quietly, in contemplation or more harrowing emotional drives, Boychuk’s poems unravel the weight of a complicated relationship spanning their entwined lifetimes to expose the tendrils netted between a child and parent and the impossible-seeming task of disentangling oneself in the face of trauma and grief."
—Robyn Fadden, Montreal Review of Books
"Boychuk portrays grief and language as gatekeepers of memory, mercilessly exerting influence on the past, present, and future, a narrative perspective that endures across the collection. [...] Such an artful approach highlights the challenges of rendering grief, specifically navigating the balance between poetic perfectionism and raw emotion."
—Izzi Holmes, Montreal International Poetry Prize
current virtual class offerings:
writing life into lore:
a samhain-inspired generative workshop
Saturday, October 17 | 12:00 - 2:30 p.m. (PDT) via zoom
Halloween is a time of thinning veils, trick mirrors, and folklore. In this generative writing workshop, we will work through Samhain-inspired prompts as we consider our stories and lived experiences through the past, present, and future. Together, we'll infuse even the most mundane details of our lives with a little magic, and turn them into lore.This is a multi-genre workshop, and the prompts can be applied to memoir/personal essay, poetry, or fiction. Whether you are fleshing out a fictional character or writing the truths of your own life, writers will come away from this workshop with an inventory of images and ideas.
cost: $50
(Or free with the purchase of a yearly subscription to my Substack, No Word for Home.)
Three free spots available for those facing financial barriers.Contact me directly at [email protected] to reserve your spot!
in-person writing workshop offerings
living elegies:
a poetry workshop
More info coming soon!
Subscribe to my substack!
no word for home
I moved out of my parents' home at the end of eleventh grade, after an incredibly tumultuous year for my family. One Friday afternoon, my French teacher asked the class to tell him our weekend plans in French. I was planning to take the bus to see my parents at their new house, but couldn't figure out how to construct the sentence. I asked him to tell me the French word for "home." He said there is no word for home, and that I could say I was going to the house where my parents lived.No Word for Home is sometimes a newlsetter, sometimes a personal essay, and sometimes a postcard about writing, home, memory, trauma, and bodies. Follow me here as I talk books, ghosts, food, therapy, and more!