Numen > Special Projects :: Jay > book of hours
Jay Heins’ debut poetry collection, book of hours, gently asks you to consider both small miracles and large tragedies. Inspired by medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts, Heins adapts this practice of pairing poetry with visual art into a nature-based secular kind of worship. These unconventional prayers are a devotional practice of gratitude juxtaposed with grief, meditations on how death informs life. Consider the lilac bushes taking over the cemetery. The “hills / that unzipped green / only yesterday” set against the doors of the chemo ward. Heins’ poetry sketches the beauty and pain when “time removes the guardrails.” Always returning to nature for solace, with a focus on the cyclical, book of hours reminds us that “time stops; yet / I am moving / and the river flows.”
Download a sample of the introduction and four poems from book of hours, in PDF.
book of hours is a well measured taking stock of middle age. Beauty has been discovered, celebrated but harder lessons come with the weather and time. Heins learns to “forget everything, just try to be a good person.” And that is the biggest trick in the universe. These poems come from an uncluttered and untroubled human heart, real life has a hard edge and Heins meets it head on. Then tempers it all with a softened blow of good hope.
—Michael Dennis, author of Low Centre of Gravity
Heins has the gift of facing tragedy without hopelessness and beauty without cliché. book of hours somehow offers comfort while also reminding the reader of the inevitability of death. While in some moments “everything / is broken,” in others we reside “where waves lift stones / and fall back with a miraculous clatter.” The photographs paired with each poem have the effect of both grounding the reader, allowing a clear view into the speaker’s world, while also creating a sense of space and exploration. “Days are indifferent. Days are agnostic” but they are also full of moving water, of laughter, of sunshine reflecting off your loved one’s hair. Heins deftly holds these two extremes in balance, leading you to understand they are not in opposition at all.
—Conyer Clayton, author of We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite
Heins traverses time through silence. His poems are a summoning spell for significance in all that we take for granted, a regression into childlike wonder towards the minutiae and discovering new absurdities in habit.
—Khashayar Mohammadi, author of Me, You, Then Snow
koan
It takes one hundred thousand years
for a photon from the centre of the sun
to clear the inferno of its interior,
and eight minutes seventeen seconds
to travel the distance to Earth.
Eternity to escape, then
a joyous rush to sow gentle kisses
on pink apple blossoms.
What People Are Saying
“Book of hours is a transformative and touching book with page after page of spectacular images, words and concepts. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended!”
— Kit Flynn on Nov 17, 2021
about
Jay Heins was born and raised in the Ottawa Valley. book of hours, his first collection poetry and photography, explores love of place, family, the body, aging, grief, and loss. Jay holds a BFA from University of Ottawa and has held an eclectic mix of jobs throughout his working life: certified journeyman chef, fine art handler and preparator, education technology consultant and art director. He finds joy travelling through the world on two wheels and lives in Ottawa with Tanya and Samuel.
