Theophylline by Ern Moure and Elisa Sampedrin

Theophyllineis a work of poetry motivated by asthma, seeking poetry's futurity in a queer and female heritage. Moure crosses a border to engage the poetry of three American modernistsMuriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, and Angelina Weld Grimkas a translator might enter work to translate it. But what if that work is already in English?

Moure listens to rhythms, punctuation, conditions of production and reception, and finds migration patterns, queeritude, mother mimory, wars, silence, constraints on breath, and social bias played out in terms of race and/or class. Moving from present to past to a future in the unwritten; querying borders, jarred by intrusions from alter ego Elisa Sampedrn,Theophyllinefinishes with poems informed by pandemic walks and human aging that include two translations: from Rosala de Castro, pre-modernist poet who wrote in Galician calling on women to speak, and from Csar Vallejo, the twentieth century Peruvian whose poetics shattered the colonial (Spanish) tongue. (From House of Anansi Press)

• Ern Moure finalist for $10K prize for best translated book of poetry

Ern Moure is a poet and translator based in Montreal. She is the author of over 15 books including Kapusta, The Elements, and Furious which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry in 1988.

Elisa Sampedrin is Moure's fictional alter ego.