Julie Paul | Issue 36
We longed to find the source of the singing but our legs
were broken. Well, not broken, but unusable,
untrustworthy. In fact they were fine, our legs, but we’d
forgotten how to walk and there was no one left to lead
the way. Did we want a leader? We thought of other
leaders, how they’d taken their people to glory and/or
graves and we decided it wasn’t worth the risk. But the
singing – the melody seeped through the cracks in the wall
like the scent of a lemon tart. The voices harmonized as if
the wind and sea, sky and light, had joined forces to take
us down. We felt a deep twitch in our hamstrings. Our toes
grabbed at the dirt. Who dared to make such a joyful noise,
we whispered, our vocal cords long turned to rust. We
longed to find the source of sound. The urge to move grew
louder within us, swelled to mirror the choral crescendo
that haunted us. But instead we sat with our backs against
the wall and let the music ruin us, note by note.
© 2024 “The Source of the Singing” by Julie Paul from Whiny Baby published with permission of McGill-Queen’s University Press.Julie Paul’s second book of poetry, Whiny Baby (2024), follows the 2017 release of the poetry collection The Rules of the Kingdom, both published with McGill-Queen’s University Press. She is also the author of three short fiction collections, The Jealousy Bone (Emdash, 2008), The Pull of the Moon and Meteorites (both Touchwood Editions, 2014 / 2019). Julie’s poetry, fiction and CNF have been widely published and recognized; The Pull of the Moon won the 2015 Victoria Book Prize, The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and her personal essay “It Not Only Rises, It Shines” received TNQ’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award. Unless she’s visiting her daughter in Montreal, Julie lives in Victoria BC, where, in addition to writing and playing with paint, she works as a Registered Massage Therapist.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Whiny Baby
by Julie PaulMcGill-Queen's University Press, 2024Chomping / champing / championing / churlish / … / There’s a wolf at the door / that looks exactly like me
Who is the “whiny baby” in this book? Rather than calling names or hurling insults, the candid poems in this collection most often implicate the poet herself.
Expansive in form and voice, the poems in Julie Paul’s second collection offer both love letters and laments. They take us to construction sites, meadows, waiting rooms, beaches, alleys, gardens, and frozen rivers, from Montreal to Hornby Island. They ask us to live in the moment, despite the moment. Including a spirited long poem that riffs on the fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” these poems are like old friends that at once console and confess. They blow kisses, they remember, and they celebrate the broken and the lost alongside the beautiful.
At turns frank, peevish, introspective, and mischievous, the poems share sincere and intimate perspectives on the changing female body, our natural and built landscapes, and the idiosyncrasies of modern life. Whiny Baby calls on us to simultaneously examine and exult in our brief time on earth.
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