Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor
Poetry about finding purpose in a capitalistic world
Borrowing its title from a finance term—"the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists"—Shadow Price is a stunning debut that examines the idea of value in a world that burns under our capitalist lens.
What gives life value? How do we serve existing societal structures that determine its cost? Employing both surreal and documentary imagery, Farah Ghafoor's arresting collection articulates how narrative is used to revise the past and manipulate the future, ultimately forming our present-day climate crisis.
Interrogating personal complicity, generational implications, and the shock of our collective disregard for a world that sustains every living thing, Shadow Price captures the complexities of living and writing as a young poet born in the year that "climate change denial" first appeared in print.
Mourning the loss of Earth's biodiversity, from insects to mammoths to trees, these introspective poems invite us to consider the risks and rewards of loving what may vanish in our lifetime.
Shadow Price charges readers to contemplate their power and purpose in the world today, recognizing that there is hope even in the belly of the beast. (From House of Anansi Press)
Shadow Price is available in April 2025.
Farah Ghafoor is a poet with work that has appeared in publications such as The Walrus, Prism International, Room, Ninth Letter and Hobart. Her poems have been taught at Iowa State University and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She won the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2022. Born in New York and raised in New Brunswick and Ontario, she currently works as a financial analyst in Toronto.