Simina Banu is a poet and musician living in Montreal.
Poetry (Chapbook)
Harmony in Beach Foam
Toronto: Anstruther Press, 2022.
Poetry
I Will Get Up Off Of: Poetry
Toronto: Coach House Books, 2024.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
I Will Get Up Off Of is a book about trying to leave a chair. How does anyone ever leave a chair? There are so many muscles involved – so many tarot cards, coats, meds, McNuggets, and memes. In this book, poems are attempts and failures at movement as the speaker navigates her anxiety and depression in whatever way she can, looking for hope from social workers on Zoom, wellness influencers, and psychics alike. Eventually, the poems explode in frustration, splintering into various art forms as attempts at expression become more and more desperate. What is there to lean on when avenues promising help don’t help? Bell may want to #talk but does it want to listen? I Will Get Up Off Of explores the role art plays in survival and the hope that underlies every creative impulse.
Poetry
POP
Toronto: Coach House Books, 2020.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
POP rummages through the stale Cheetos after the love poem: what remains? What never existed to begin with? The book invites the reader to journey both forward and backward in time, to retrace steps, solve word searches, hold pages to the light. POP delineates the intensities of a volatile relationship through a variety of lenses. As the speaker tries to anchor her experience, she is met with a clamour of perspectives: it is a junk food fight of poetic styles, each line fried and seasoned using recipes passed down for generations; it is a sad clown’s skincare routine; it is a singalong, a cartoonish cacophony of pots and puns. The speaker shakes the love poem for all it’s worth, leaving behind a trail of lint, wrappers, fibs, and soap foam, but opening up enough space to move in herself.
Awards and Honours
2021 ReLit Award for Poetry (Winner)