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My Mother’s Body (2020)

for SATB choir, a cappella

Text: Zara Neukom (b. 1991)
Duration: 4 minutes 30 seconds
Difficulty: 2/4

Commissioned by Pro Coro Canada and Michael Zaugg (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor) with generous support from the Edmonton Arts Council through the Connections and Exchanges program. First performed by Pro Coro Canada (Michael Zaugg, dir.) in October 2020.

This piece was commissioned by Pro Coro Canada in July 2020 as part of an initiative to create new choral works for the Edmonton community, providing local choristers with the opportunity to continue to sing from home. In searching for texts, I was immediately struck by the titular poem: “My Mother’s Body”, by Kelowna-based Zara Neukom. Neukom evokes an image of her mother that is otherworldly and frozen in time, and yet undeniably coloured by grief. In my setting of this poem, I try to capture the joy and beauty of this “white-haired goddess” with richness and vibrant colour.

Stream a full recording of “My Mother’s Body” on Pro Coro TV.

Full Text

Ravens lift, weightless in the updraft
snow dusts clay like flour on a stone surface.

My mother, white-haired goddess on thin legs
watches the wind-players and laughs with them.

I watch my mother watch the birds. Her soft eyes fall
and lift again. She was sick for a year a year I wasn’t home.

When the organ of your body that is programed to give life turns
against you, how do you still say woman? I was drinking in a hostel

half way across the world. I remember I had 3 minutes of Internet left
when I opened the email with a picture of my mother

with cloth for hair. My dad shaved his beard. I cried
in a room full of faces I didn’t know. A flock of

ravens is called unkindness. I’m watching
them in the lines of my mother’s body

and it seems impossible to believe
in bad omens. She steps on frozen

sage. And for a minute laughing
feels like floating

© Zara Neukom, 2018. Used with permission.