I finished the final draft of my introduction to Best Canadian Poetry 2019 and my daughter was born. In that order, barely. Two days prior, as I was fumbling to summarize a year’s worth of poetry in 1,500 words, my wife’s Braxton Hicks contractions had us packing for the hospital. I clacked keys to near breaking. A similar fervour had fallen over me four years earlier, when our first child was born. I had been writing a poem a week throughout my wife’s pregnancy — those poems were later collected as The News — and as my wife’s due date loomed, I realized that I had no way of knowing which poem would be the last. Maybe it would be “39 Weeks,” or “40.” Or perhaps the baby would linger, and I’d have to add another — the book, like the baby inside, inconveniently plumping. Each word I wrote just might have been my last.
I was childless when I wrote The News. I composed that book in silent parks on sunny afternoons, or in bed after sleeping in on yet...
Rob Taylor has published four poetry collections, most recently Strangers.
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