Book of the Week | the new green by GRIX

What does it mean to become new? Not to begin again with a clean slate, but to grow into a version of ourselves that makes room for everything we have experienced. The title of GRIX’s collection, the new green, suggests just such a possibility. Green is the colour of emergence, but also of persistence, of something finding its way through whatever lies in its path.

Published in 2021 by Cuttlefish Books, this collection moves between the natural world and the poet’s interior landscape. Birds, flowers, insects, trees and changing skies are not simply subjects for observation. They become points of entry into questions of identity, the body, illness, anger, belonging and the uncertain business of being oneself.

Consider this haiku.

orange blossom
not as soft
as I appear

The poem begins with an image associated with fragrance and delicacy, then turns it into a statement of selfhood. The speaker resists the assumptions that appearance invites. The understated final line gives the blossom a personality, but also opens the poem to a larger question about how often we mistake gentleness for fragility.

That question becomes more explicit here.

damselfly
I, too, am mistaken
for what I am not

The delicate insect becomes a companion in the experience of being misread. The shift from observation to personal identification is beautifully economical. The poem asks us to consider the distance between what we see and what something, or someone, actually is.

GRIX also brings the experience of illness into the natural world without making either a metaphorical prop for the other.

washi paper
I fold my ailment
into a swan

The transformation is striking. The ailment is not denied or made to disappear. Instead, the speaker works with it, giving it another shape. The swan carries both the weight of what is folded and the possibility of grace. This act of making carries an intimacy, as though art offers a way to hold what the body cannot simply put aside.

Elsewhere, a personal moment opens into a wider emotional landscape.

outside my window
geese going somewhere
I’m not

The poem’s power lies in the difference between movement and stillness. The geese have a destination, or at least a direction. The speaker remains where they are. The plainness of the final line makes the separation all the more affecting. It may speak of longing, limitation or simply the experience of watching life move on beyond one’s reach.

The collection eventually arrives at its title in a final, pared-down statement.

content to be
the new green

After the many questions of identity and belonging, this feels less like a conclusion than an acceptance. The speaker does not need to become an earlier self or conform to an expected shape. There is room to grow into something different.

The book’s visual presentation also deserves attention. GRIX uses varied typography and spatial arrangement, allowing some poems to occupy the page in unexpected ways. The fragmented arrangement of the poem beginning “at the base of a redwood” makes the reader move through the words differently, while the playful dispersal of letters in the poem featuring Dalí poppies turns the page itself into part of the reading experience. These experiments are not decorative additions. They extend the collection’s interest in perception, perspective and the possibilities of language.

What might it mean to be content with the person we are becoming? And what new growth might begin when we stop trying to return to an earlier version of ourselves?

You can explore GRIX’s the new green in the Digital Library. You can also find the THF Digital Library through the carousel on the home page.

Do you have a full- or chapbook-length book published in 2021 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. THF Digital Librarian Vidya Premkumar selects Book of the Week titles, and we feature them with permission.