For Mama
Aren’t some names heavier than others, leashed to histories
slit with anguish? Auschwitz. Hiroshima. Chernobyl.
Katrina—trauma-soaked syllables. Names anchored
in trespass or shadow. Hefts
one drags from the delivery room
to the hearse. In Ukrainian, the word for name—iм’я (‘eemya’)—
phonetically nudges the Hebrew for mother— אמא (‘eemuh’)—
which means, name and mother come tangled
in my cultures’ languages: monikers trail bodies
like second umbilical cords. Voiced by mothers,
teachers, friends, lovers, names arrive as devotions,
distortions, reprimands, murmurs—linguistic homes
to title and trap. Each ribboned and wrapped
with meaning: grace, island, lioness. When I learn
his name means to carry, I wonder with what little weights
he has filled his life. “What’s in a name?” Shakespeare insists
in a play that unyokes lovers because the name of each
is distasteful to the family of the other. And what of names
that are omitted, written out of stories, unmouthed? Silence
for the testimonyless, the fleshly ghosts. Ungravestoned energies
deferred until another world. Named after my grandmother,
whom I never met, I carry my name like a secret heirloom,
an ancestral scar. Names press first scars upon our too small skin.
On my right ankle, a birthmark shaped like a pink blurry I—
a self marked atop self. I, our other name. Aye, a howled
affirmation.
Eye, an iris and pupil: witnessing, witnessing.
Anna Veprinska’s second poetry collection, Bonememory, was published with U of Calgary P in April 2025. She has published two books of poems, a monograph, and two chapbooks.
Questions and Answers
Is there a specific moment that inspired you to pursue poetry?
When I was seven, I remember asking my father for a notebook. When he gave me a notebook, I remember poems (well, what I considered poems at the time) pouring out. I don’t know how to explain this origin story other than to say that it happened. But I also think the pursuit of poetry continues to be a choice. I continue to choose to be awed by the world and to transliterate that awe into poems.
How/where do you find inspiration today?
I am currently living in Sydney, Nova Scotia, which experienced a hurricane last September (2022), downing trees around the city. Today I was walking home and noticed that the large tree, which had fallen last September into the brook across from my house, was growing leaves. Even the fallen longs to blossom. In a world like that, how can one not find inspiration? I think paying attention is one root of inspiration: paying attention to the shifting of seasons, to the way light changes throughout a day, to the smile on someone’s face as they look down at their phone.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
I often find myself fascinated by a word or an idea, turning it around and around in my mind, attempting to witness it from various angles. I wrote part of my monograph on poetry after Hurricane Katrina, and I found myself thinking about the practice of naming hurricanes. In this poem, I was consumed by names: the names we lend to disasters, the weight of names carrying history and ancestry, the names we are given at birth, the way our names are spoken, the individuals whose names are omitted from stories, etc. This poem was a way for me to work through these ideas, to witness the word and the concept of names.