books

The Pink of The Seams (Penrose Press, 2019) chapbook, out of print

Lantern (House of Anansi Press, releasing September 22, 2026) preorder now!

Meditations on the beauty of an ordinary life

Sanna Wani’s second poetry collection, Lantern, explores how we fall in love and make a home. What does it mean to belong to a city, or to truly enter adulthood? Imbued with a quiet queerness, this book is a guide for living in the aftermath of familial rifts, crises of faith, political struggle, and intergenerational grief—all while remaining devoted to an idea of goodness.

A love letter to Toronto, Lantern is grounded in subway stations and city parks yet textured like watercolour and linen. Wani writes with reverence for animals, trees and flowers, but does not avoid everyday difficulties—the burnout of a 9-5; her fraught homeland of Kashmir; or the reality of Islamophobia in Canada. Wani also addresses the craft and the limits of language. Lantern is kaleidoscopic in its queries: memory, mothering and morality refract through tarot, Sufism, and psychoanalysis.

A balm and an ode, this collection places Wani in the lineage of Mary Oliver while carving her own path as both theo- and ecopoet. Taking stock of one precious life, Lantern invites us to consider our responsibilities—to ourselves and each other—and to choose who we might become.

Cover design by Alysia Shewchuk
Cover design by Alysia Shewchuk

My Grief, the Sun (House of Anansi Press, 2022) order now!

  • SHORTLISTED for the 2023 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award with the League of Canadian Poets
  • LONGLISTED for the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award with the League of Canadian Poets
  • WINNER of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry with Ontario Creates
    • Jury citation: “Sanna Wani’s My Grief, the Sun is an impressive collection. With a theological playfulness, the poems travel around the world, through pop culture and prayers and the emotional landscapes of grief and loss. The writing is startling, surprising, breath-taking. It takes poetic risks that pay off in strange and wonderful ways, expanding the entire genre in its wake. Wani has revealed herself as a formidable talent with this collection.”