we astronauts by Pearl Pirie | The Miramichi Reader

we astronauts, Pearl Pirie’s latest chapbook from Pinhole Poetry Press, is a collection of sixteen sex and love poems set around the subjective universe of what the author describes as a decades-long relationship with her partner; “a space station built for two” (in the words of her publisher), orbiting the ordinary and the everyday. Each poem is about going the distance and trusting the journey, however long or short it might be.

This is a straightforward, honest collection, with little forays into word play (“love extends as a prism / not a prison”) and lighthearted haiku (which Pirie titles “haikuing you 1 &2”).

from lust to dust—
us at the constant centre
of our solar system

More observational than confessional, Pirie writes not from the margins, but from the centre of her own life. This is a radical act—to narrate one’s interiority and place it before the world without apology. Pirie writes with the quiet confidence of someone who has nothing to prove, only her own observations to share. With minimal nostalgia or sentimentality, she resists clinging to youth and instead, her poems dwell fully in the unfolding moment.

This is a radical act—to narrate one’s interiority and place it before the world without apology.

Pirie trusts small images — a leaf trembling in rain, a remembered hand on her back, the scent of soap — to hold entire galaxies of meaning. The poems honour daily encounters of relationship: the taste of morning tea, the ache of waiting, the companionship of trees, the silent dialogue with ancestors. There is an implicit understanding that nothing is trivial if held with clear, loving awareness.

why should Gregorian chant / unclench the armadillo / in my chest when Catholics knocked out of reach / the bauble of faith of my ancestors / and bombed the streets of my great-great family’s town.

The poems explicitly about sex are down-to-earth; more glimmer than fireworks. For example, making love while injured (“aware of a blanket pulled over and of / a worried face near, I kiss the tender neck / and, with the good arm, pull him here.”) or a pragmatic description of sex at 50 (“and we are soft lego / interlocked”). In “scaling back” the poet celebrates that niche human experience of continuity (e.g., beyond the Big Crush and the Fresh Flush of newest)—

the nearest dear-heart for the strangeness
of day. we can read each other.

we were once a tiny origami, a secret
cursive cypher that we delighted in cracking,

but now we are writ with rollers and glue,
a billboard. we, the solar sail, of one another’s heart.

These poems reorient our gaze toward deeper, life-affirming truths beneath (and beyond) appearances. They counter the current cultural obsession with speed and productivity by exploring the value of attentive presence—

we lean in to hear, lipread, we
are priests to one another’s confessions

In reading these poems one feels invited into a circle of trust – a place where vulnerability is met with grace and where each detail, no matter how small, is honoured as part of the fabric of existence—

some days the bed/ needs to pay you to leave it/ and it, being underemployed/ flat broke besides

Pirie is a prolific writer and bookmaker with decades of experience and experimentation. This chapbook had its origins in a workshop from early 2000 with Ottawa poet rob mclennan. They were exploring the “sex in sevens” tradition of (mostly) males writing sex narratives. Pirie decided to push beyond her own comfort zone and crack open the genre by writing the narrative from a female perspective. This resulted in her 2016 chapbook Sex in Sevens, published by above/ground press. we astronauts is the second portion of that work. Pirie’s ongoing goal is to write love poems that are intimate and direct, with humour and unabashed individuality.

The physical chapbook itself is also a labour of love and handcrafted beauty (a hallmark of Pinhole Poetry Press). The saturated indigo blue cover features tiny pinholes of stars, with shimmering gold endpapers, textured interior pages and handsewn binding.

To paraphrase the poet’s own words from the recent TMR post Why I Wrote This Book Issue #47, we astronauts feels like the right book for right now. In a world that may appear scarier than usual, Pirie reminds us to keep paying attention to tenderness and caring. Her inspiring poems playfully model the importance of love and trust in these wild and unpredictable times.

we astronauts feels like the right book for right now.

My favourite passage in the collection comes from the final (and title) poem, “you can’t be an astronaut forever?”—

putting in the hours, being together
is our superpower.

In the Grimm dark of cerebral forest
inside the sunless brain

of space station habitat, you are a leaf
and I am roots and we are rain, and breath

that sustains, we remake the universe
with these radiation-proof seeds sown in each
other

who said we need
to come down to earth?

Pearl Pirie is an award-winning poet, editor, and book reviewer, living in rural Quebec. She has published a number of poetry chapbooks including footlights (Radiant Press, 2020) and rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. Her poems have been given the nod for Best Canadian Poetry in English three times. She is a haiku aficionado and also writes at https://pearlpirie.substack.com/ and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet. Her website is www.pearlpirie.com

Publisher: Pinhole Poetry Chapbook Press (Spring 2025)

Catherine Walker

Catherine Walkeris a writer/editor living on the South Shore of Miꞌkmaꞌki (Nova Scotia). A founding member of the Little Books Collective, a community-building micropress in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Catherine is the author of two chapbooks: Short Takes: My seven-week career in the film biz (2024) and the call of many sorrows: fourteen poems (2023).

Catherine Walker

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