Not One of These Poems Is About You

TEVA HARRISON (1976–2019) was an author and visual artist. She wrote and illustrated the critically acclaimed graphic memoir In-Between Days, which was the winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Joe Shuster Award for Cartoonist or Auteur, and was a Globe and Mail, National Post, Kobo, and Quill & Quire Book of the Year. Forty-five works from In-Between Days have been exhibited in a solo show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Teva was Principal Illustrator for the National Film Board/National Theatre production of playwright Jordan Tannahill’s Draw Me Close: A Memoir, a virtual reality theatrical experience blending live theatre and virtual reality technology.She was a finalist for the Canadian Magazine Award and the National Magazine Award, and her writing appeared in the Walrus, Granta, Quill & Quire, the Huffington Post, Carte Blanche, Reader’s Digest (Canada, U.S., and International editions), the Globe and Mail, and more. She was a regular commentator on CBC Radio, in the Toronto Star, and in the Globe and Mail, and she appeared on programs including Canada AM, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Space TV’s InnerSpace, The Morning Show, and in Maclean’s, Chatelaine, and Rabble.ca. She was also the illustrator of The Joyful Living Colouring Book.

“Chiaroscuro is, in art, the treatment of light and shade used to create depth and dimension. Teva’s poems have that play of light and shadow. They beam such love and the very whole of life, its essence at the very moment when her own life is receding. She asks us to lean in and listen, and though her voice may be a whisper, it can still shatter glass. Her words hold duality. They are deeply personal, profoundly universal. They are profane and sacred. She is not with us, but she is with us. The poems, each word painstakingly chosen, are polished stones fetched up on the shores of our lives. I am so grateful for this collection: to hear her voice again now, and always.” — Shelagh Rogers