Blood Root
by Jessica Hiemstra
ECW Books
112 pages
$22
Jessica Hiemstra’s latest poetry collection, Blood Root, explores themes of belonging, home, and the complexities of loss related to war and colonialism. Rarely shying away from the rawness of death and the realities of life in Badela, Sierra Leone, during the civil war from 1991 to 2002, Hiemstra masterfully oscillates between memories of her childhood there and her move to Bobcaygeon, Ontario, contemplating the echoes of her past.
With a background as a visual artist, Hiemstra has woven several of her works into the book, offering a visual counterpart that complements the poems with quiet grace. As someone who cherishes poetry collections that include original artwork, Blood Root was a feast for the senses, where both words and images dance in harmony.
Through visceral recollections of her birthplace and the remnants left behind in moving to a new place, she unravels the fleeting nature of the human experience, confronting profound truths such as the struggle to find one’s place in the world: “I have no home / so I don’t know who I am,” she writes.
The collection’s most striking poems are those that probe death, contrasting gentle expressions of grief with stark depictions of violence. Hiemstra masterfully lays bare the rawness of loss, while gently tracing the contours of grief, revealing how its shadow lingers and reshapes those it touches. One line, “I’ve seen necks slit so tenderly / I can sleep at night,” invites a profound reflection on how the mind can acclimate to the pervasive violence lingering in one’s surroundings, even after conflicts appear to have ceased. Through these particular poems, readers witness how death quietly infiltrates every corner in the aftermath of conflict. As Hiemstra writes, “Not everyone’s forgotten the war / scars carved into backs are memorials.”
Though Blood Root is deeply personal, at times reading like diary entries, I can’t help but appreciate Hiemstra’s dissections of identity and how we perceive ourselves when we have no firm sense of home. Certainly, everyone’s experience with belonging varies greatly, but some of the poems in Blood Root resonate with the universal human struggle to understand oneself, particularly when rootedness feels elusive.
Through the intertwining of memory and loss, Blood Root compels readers to confront the complex truths of our own sense of belonging, leaving us not with answers, but with the vital reminder that we are all irrevocably shaped by the past we carry within us.
