On the Back of a Tiger

Issue #1 of the Paper Engines chapbook series.

I originally wrote On the Back of a Tiger for Stephen Collis’s poetry workshop, taken at SFU in 2015. This was the final creative writing class of my degree, and this long piece my capstone.

I am grateful to Dr. Collis and my classmates, all those years ago, for putting up with this didactic and experimental submission. Though much too long for a workshop contribution, they responded with charity and thoughtfulness, willing to travel with me in my exploration.

Eight years on, I cannot help but see the shortcomings of the work and debated whether or not it was worth reformatting and preparing for publication. But, in rereading, in being transported back to those heady days of theory and interrogation and collaboration and critique, I let my younger self speak over me, assuring me that indeed the force of our becoming prowls beyond our insufficiencies. 

This work captures a moment in passage. May it meet each of you where you need meeting in passages of your own.