She Can Still Sing

She Can Still Sing by Louisa Adjoa Parker beats with the knowledge of what it is to have known pain, but still remember the pathways of joy. One part love letter to the mundane, three parts hymn to the departed, four parts ride of wonderment, these poems celebrate the bonds of friendship and family even as they leave love notes to the departed stuffed into surprising images. Written while Louisa grieved the loss of a friend who took her life after a long struggle with mental illness, She Can Still Sing is a eulogy that projects from light. The pamphlet evinces Louisa’s connection to the environment in its nods to water and the earth’s many-coloured bounty of flora. Weaved throughout She Can Still Sing, there is a clear sense of the passage of time and its maintenance of the natural order of things, the cycle of life. Where there is grief, there is joy, and to lose sight of that might make of one “beating crimson wings/ against the glass of a window which can never/ be opened”