Anne Michaels, born April 15, 1958, is a Canadian poet and novelist whose work has been translated and published in over 45 countries. Her books have garnered dozens of international awards including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honors. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award. Michaels won a 2019 Vine Award for Infinite Gradation, her first volume of non-fiction. Michaels was the poet laureate of Toronto, Ontario, Canada from 2016 to 2019, and she is perhaps best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces which was adapted for the screen in 2007.
I DREAMED AGAIN
Anne Michaels
I dreamed again you were alive, and woke
certain it was your voice
love is whisky, it is milk,
it is water don’t ever, you said in the dream,
think I’ve gone
I woke a little more, a moment or two,
then remembered. Memory makes it so. Keeps you
under the trees.
So I did not turn on the lamp
but lay until I felt again your warmth with mine
heard your voice in my hair
I lay there a long time,
forgetting