tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25237115329709875812024-02-19T00:45:15.989-05:00CONCRETE & RIVERSusan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.comBlogger223125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-85099907340941255872023-12-29T11:56:00.003-05:002023-12-29T12:20:05.109-05:00Sort of Sorcery: A Brief Q&A with Jessica Moore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkzfmR7CPSEfruHY8-puCQVHt48flUI_r2h7LEoEyn822eafWUly46gIOO08iZIfuSDGPxPV-kIagUW8D70gswAdzdTO2akFMwz0HAhRrruarP0zBnQ6a7VrW8n2cgkCZDcWBVOGhoRuEMM_4zE4XvECHkmEWYr0usyUKHf0A5j6Ow-1QdVgSca9kRQaA8/s306/Image.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="306" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkzfmR7CPSEfruHY8-puCQVHt48flUI_r2h7LEoEyn822eafWUly46gIOO08iZIfuSDGPxPV-kIagUW8D70gswAdzdTO2akFMwz0HAhRrruarP0zBnQ6a7VrW8n2cgkCZDcWBVOGhoRuEMM_4zE4XvECHkmEWYr0usyUKHf0A5j6Ow-1QdVgSca9kRQaA8/s1600/Image.jpeg" width="306" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"><i>SUSAN GILLIS: The poem <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/12/jessica-moore-all-your-memories.html" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank">“In ten minutes, aside from what you write down on this paper, all your memories will be erased”</a> emerges from a speculative proposition, assembling a wonderful (and achronological) catalogue of touchstones, playing with ideas of keeping and categorizing. I’m curious about how the poem works as assemblage. Does the act of remembering locate things in place and time for you, or does it dissolve those boundaries? <o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;">JESSICA MOORE: I do feel a specificity of place and time with each memory evoked. But I love this question about dissolving boundaries. The question of porousness – and motherhood, art, love, self, integrity – is foremost in my mind since giving birth to my twins and thinking about what it means to be so open, as a mother, and about the dangers (physical and otherwise) that loom when there are no boundaries. In the poem, the act of remembering does the work of locating, of situating specifics, but the poem does the work of dissolving boundaries. The poem places all these touchstones achronologically, as you say, leaping around in time and space, from four years old to forty, from the desert to a far-off continent to the furnace in the basement of my childhood home. And the <i>you</i> in the poem is every you, dissolving boundaries between people. The poem brings all these entities and moments and people into one assemblage of brightest, strangest, most joyous points. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;">In terms of keeping and categorizing, what interested me was that by choosing to keep certain memories, I was also choosing which ones to leave behind. And it really did feel like a sort of sorcery: if I could keep this but not this other part (the whales, but not my mother’s remove, for example), I could smooth out some of the most ensnaring moments and keep the euphoric ones. Poem as edit to life. But at the same time, by including on the page the memories that are ‘left behind,’ the poem becomes the kind of container I aspire to be myself – spacious enough to hold it all.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;">Re-reading it, I can really feel my mind moving around, roving over memory like a riverbank, peering around at first, and then becoming more breathless. But even as the poem picks up speed I see my mind pausing in pleasure, sitting down for a moment with this one or that one.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;">Poem as spell, to cast off the power of what was banal or painful; poem as a reminder of the shockingly sweet and simple pleasures of life – not abstract “life” but <i>this</i> one, this life I’m living.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGAsLaTwkY7i0JvgwPZLVmLQKmfAE7-h2QShnK8GLgHuApqgTu_x8PzArR0Sc8SqaN6hjACmuB1G5ulmI3XFRfqNAvCU0NT5cIMCUarbJz5R8NOXG3xkxRwUAvMYOMCh4klDawB1kTiP0-F69-eWrok4fT_1RFkNqhnXNXLrDlXMFfr2gVNCwWf7xh840/s294/Image.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="294" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGAsLaTwkY7i0JvgwPZLVmLQKmfAE7-h2QShnK8GLgHuApqgTu_x8PzArR0Sc8SqaN6hjACmuB1G5ulmI3XFRfqNAvCU0NT5cIMCUarbJz5R8NOXG3xkxRwUAvMYOMCh4klDawB1kTiP0-F69-eWrok4fT_1RFkNqhnXNXLrDlXMFfr2gVNCwWf7xh840/s1600/Image.jpeg" width="294" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/12/jessica-moore-all-your-memories.html" target="_blank">Read "In ten minutes, aside from what you write down on this paper, all your memories will be erased"</a></i></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-19794194393598904752023-12-19T09:30:00.008-05:002023-12-29T12:17:46.631-05:00Jessica Moore: In ten minutes, aside from what you write down on this paper, all your memories will be erased<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSgVtnuRQoqtLzPgkburtXEMIUvjHCJoDDAQy9Taa9fwdt5IAv-WL5vLbqUCU29nuTO2IjnY466oM4I2fVIzHhovOM7vq3cizyqKTBCzAG4Hmz98qFY3gLZlebP9b137xvbkULkOsuOxAkH9jwAlZOWHGBgIeW2Z4nG5MEdmPW4gllXgoJ8k5IcJ9OSxi/s1024/2C8C44BF-B129-4C1A-9DB4-D116A7087A0C_1_105_c.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSgVtnuRQoqtLzPgkburtXEMIUvjHCJoDDAQy9Taa9fwdt5IAv-WL5vLbqUCU29nuTO2IjnY466oM4I2fVIzHhovOM7vq3cizyqKTBCzAG4Hmz98qFY3gLZlebP9b137xvbkULkOsuOxAkH9jwAlZOWHGBgIeW2Z4nG5MEdmPW4gllXgoJ8k5IcJ9OSxi/w480-h640/2C8C44BF-B129-4C1A-9DB4-D116A7087A0C_1_105_c.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">JESSICA MOORE</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">In ten minutes, aside from what you write down on this paper, all your memories will be erased</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the dark basement, and I would keep the eye </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">of the furnace. I would keep the underwater, the click</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">of the needle, the soft pulse of toads</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">inside cupped hands</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep laughing till our bellies hurt </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">on the bus to your grandmother’s farm </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">The pig who ate the mitten. The weedy passages </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">between lakes, and that I wasn’t afraid</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Stars above and snow beneath</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">the silent forest and my mother pulling the sled</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Stars above and stars beneath</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">phosphorescence in the nighttime sea</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep my grandmother’s voice, <i>you wicked girl</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and fighting not to burst out laughing in the taxi</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">as the ancient driver jolted us to College and Bay</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Her pale eyes smiling, the way she said my name</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Coffee in tin cups and fire smoke</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">three crows and the gossamer</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">wings of clouds</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Comfrey at the furthest back corner of the garden</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Blue mornings and the shallow sound </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">of carrots pulling free</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the closeness of women, and the island </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">where once we docked, brilliant dark blue lake </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">behind us, climbing up past yellow flowers </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">into a place all our own</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the whales, but not my mother’s remove that day</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the wolf who held my gaze. I would keep the tent walls beating </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">all around us but not the rest, not even the night you taught me to two-step</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and not the time I wept beside creosote, antelope turning like birds</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep John Berger, <i>a skin of water flowing continuously</i>, the paragraphs </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I set to memory after the terrible accident</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">The way I lean into you at the piano</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">which is the same way you dive into every single body of water</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">with something more heedless than faith</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would not keep the first kiss </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">—but I would keep that first kiss, oh god yes</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and the worn wood floor in the Junction </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and the gift of my own body given back, the spiral of my ear</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the tandem bike, the bus station in Mexico</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">the wide window in your loft and the smell of bread rising</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">The night we began, every night we began, the promise </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and the moment just before—</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Would I keep all I’ve learned since you died?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep that thing I’m always chasing which is the wild aliveness pulsing just behind things, and you can’t look for it, just like the smell of those grasses somewhere in South Carolina so drifting and sweet there was nothing to do but lay down, winds combing us, and wait</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the dream that woke me, pregnant, a shining inside like a lamp </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">before I remembered the gray </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">(but really, I have never felt more clearly such joy in a single moment, and it <i>was</i> like a lamp</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">placed there so I might remember)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep holding you on my chest, two months old, that same light radiating through us</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">Getting stranded on the sandbank when the tide came in, I would keep that too </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep dancing, yes that, and the way the desert sky has blown me open </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">even to such a keening edge. I would keep singing, every harmony ever swallowed </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and every rhythm learned in my limbs, the black dog in the night </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">and the floors of the barn covered in sweet gale</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep almost leaving my body, laughing at the trick</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 11pt;">I would keep the edge of the cliff</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE4R6bf-kVeHu7_2urozMghG1zP113NFJoB9tfZOcQW7odBKmAsJM_kR1xBXlgFvBGF220VQn3KorgEJADjl2-JBoMXkoDly-Aa15vKJY2YcFZ8ChZacmPIa1PcAKbIUUnCJ2kpvlRoB1d7qOMkKYBmahxpfargV7Dd0sA72_RskCjj8rMMGvBgObBIV0L/s2994/_DSC0753.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2994" data-original-width="2994" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE4R6bf-kVeHu7_2urozMghG1zP113NFJoB9tfZOcQW7odBKmAsJM_kR1xBXlgFvBGF220VQn3KorgEJADjl2-JBoMXkoDly-Aa15vKJY2YcFZ8ChZacmPIa1PcAKbIUUnCJ2kpvlRoB1d7qOMkKYBmahxpfargV7Dd0sA72_RskCjj8rMMGvBgObBIV0L/w400-h400/_DSC0753.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Read Jessica Moore on porousness and <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/12/a-sort-of-sorcery-brief-q-with-jessica.html" target="_blank">the making of this poem</a> in our brief Q&A. <br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0cm;"><i>(First published in </i>Arc<i> 100. Shared by permission of the author)</i></p><p></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-29407685708006255392023-11-16T08:30:00.006-05:002023-11-17T11:45:58.077-05:00Conyer Clayton: One Question & A Poem<div>Conyer Clayton's beguilingly-titled, award-winning <i>But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves</i> is a collection of prose poems that visit dreamscape and the surreal. </div><div><br /></div><div>The title's line-up of items is beguiling in itself, sharpened with hesitation (those commas!) and linkage (those <i>ands</i>!). Then there's that opening <i>But,</i> skewing it all toward hazard: uncertainty, contradiction, protest, resistance. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This poem, for example, swerves through a shifting present with an observing and questioning eye: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbbX5Piohba8Via5jHkqhjVQ11oTSGANC5bQ5C4QpGC2wjM6uVOteF52LV1fs8rdZftWdf8nA4NT40xDJQTTv0Kb0x-lpVBUx8Ivup-EWS2iWWfat9_Tz2yfvnOmUH3s8d1iepgGf6hCTDTlzHMpl_O92SkUSEvHdEcb7eY8d3Dc-CKNloFMrn6Yo5fGI/s1126/Untitled%202.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1126" data-original-width="682" height="632" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbbX5Piohba8Via5jHkqhjVQ11oTSGANC5bQ5C4QpGC2wjM6uVOteF52LV1fs8rdZftWdf8nA4NT40xDJQTTv0Kb0x-lpVBUx8Ivup-EWS2iWWfat9_Tz2yfvnOmUH3s8d1iepgGf6hCTDTlzHMpl_O92SkUSEvHdEcb7eY8d3Dc-CKNloFMrn6Yo5fGI/w387-h632/Untitled%202.jpeg" width="387" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span></span>I asked </span>Conyer<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Clayton about the work titles do in their poems, and their process of creating them. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"I am notoriously bad at coming up with book titles, usually relying on my editors or friends or partner to help me figure it out at the last minute, ha! But clearly, I love a long book title. This one simply felt right because it evokes the feelings, for me, of constant continuation, disorientation, and being unsure of one’s safety. Is this a safe haven or a place of danger? All the images could lean either way. I guess the answer for how I come up with book titles is that I fail at it for a very long time, and then someone else suggests a really good one, and I’m like whoa. Yup. That’s it.</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> </i></span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"As for poem titles, I find these easier and they usually come quickly in the aftermath of a first draft. I think what they do on a craft level somewhat differs for each poem, but maybe what they have in common is that I’m trying to add something to the overall experience of the poem, not necessarily sum the poem up."</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio482ZefO2Nq2hmdpcBAdf119Tn07-6QFya51-0o3Wz71YwVeaZnBXbIoRxFrOK4XvKB-B-Sr1DWjUHxKj4gkkoHeVHoDfaXiownh6tbpkzBESAcvS9ObbRkaOhflMGvE6Z7DSZ5wfE8EccljGyLEpyk9tZEP7bcVKbRNDl6EkBwEj0d3pii1pfgCbwBS/s3333/DSCF2227%20Curtis%20Perry.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3333" data-original-width="2499" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio482ZefO2Nq2hmdpcBAdf119Tn07-6QFya51-0o3Wz71YwVeaZnBXbIoRxFrOK4XvKB-B-Sr1DWjUHxKj4gkkoHeVHoDfaXiownh6tbpkzBESAcvS9ObbRkaOhflMGvE6Z7DSZ5wfE8EccljGyLEpyk9tZEP7bcVKbRNDl6EkBwEj0d3pii1pfgCbwBS/w300-h400/DSCF2227%20Curtis%20Perry.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Conyer Clayton (Curtis Perry photo)<br /><br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.4px; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-US">Conyer Clayton is an award-winning writer and editor</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #202124;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #202124;">whose multi-genre work explores grief, disability, addiction, and gender-based violence, often through a surrealist lens. They are</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">the author of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="https://www.anvilpress.com/books/but-the-sun-and-the-ships-and-the-fish-and-the-waves" target="_blank">But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves</a></i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, Anvil Press) and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i>We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite</i> (<span lang="EN-US">Winner of the Ottawa Book Award, Guernica Editions), and an editor for <i>Augur</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>untethered</i> <i>magazine</i>.</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-15241000504527761022023-10-13T17:27:00.078-04:002023-10-14T07:44:57.377-04:00In Memoriam, Louise Glück<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdH8VS24rLQsccRpTmqr2j-CmCvYfvTTV55ZWF14mTkdNH1FzAoCwxwmsP2_oX544-jjAbbnxwiVVYdqF-u4RcBDNURJV8K5QM5lG20Ex7h2E4Lq57daKC-dRJPlVOeM5EBZyLWgLUdW6D_BJosmgCAkr0LWVYNpJIkkCNRJv9Sq3KrcA_P7IBkywKYc-D/s4032/IMG_5274.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdH8VS24rLQsccRpTmqr2j-CmCvYfvTTV55ZWF14mTkdNH1FzAoCwxwmsP2_oX544-jjAbbnxwiVVYdqF-u4RcBDNURJV8K5QM5lG20Ex7h2E4Lq57daKC-dRJPlVOeM5EBZyLWgLUdW6D_BJosmgCAkr0LWVYNpJIkkCNRJv9Sq3KrcA_P7IBkywKYc-D/w300-h400/IMG_5274.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><p>13 October, 2023 -- Today I am mourning, like many, and in the midst of many griefs, the loss of the great poet Louise Glück. Her poems have been my steady companions throughout my writing life. Her last book of poems, <i>Winter Recipes from the Collective,</i> haunts me. </p><div style="text-align: left;">From "Night Thoughts,"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Long ago I was born. <br /> There is no one alive anymore</div><div style="text-align: left;"> who remembers me as a baby. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And from "Poem,"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Day and night come</div><div style="text-align: left;"> hand in hand like a boy and a girl</div><div style="text-align: left;"> pausing only to eat wild berries out of a dish</div><div style="text-align: left;"> painted with pictures of birds.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The pared language, the images scoured of excess, yet tender, so tender, those berries in a painted dish, the familiar movement of day and night, the way her thoughts move - how will I manage without any more new Louise Glück poems? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Ten years ago when I started this catalogue of reading poems and trying to speak about them, or at least about the reading, I <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2013/09/on-louise-glucks-telescope.html" target="_blank">began with Louise Glück's "Telescope."</a> My second post was Louise Glück's <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2013/10/louise-gluck-summer-night-orderly-and.html" target="_blank">"Summer Night."</a> The third, <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2013/09/louise-gluck-summer-night.html" target="_blank">a few words about "Summer Night."</a> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The friends I had asked for feedback on my project suggested I branch out, in case people thought it was a blog about Louise Glück. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In a way, though, it is. Her poems are among my best teachers and guides. Each poem, each time I return to it, speaks with depth and freshness that seem both familiar and new. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>As this, from "Summer Night,"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—</div> surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects<br /> to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.<br /> I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.<br /><br /> Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,<br /> imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,<br /> the dreamed as well as the lived—<br /> what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?<div><br /></div><div>That great poems speak through the ages is a truism. Louise Glück's poems prove its truth.</div><div>Long live Louise Glück!<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-48762379342520134012023-08-04T01:30:00.004-04:002023-08-04T12:38:14.604-04:00Hideko Kono: Three Poems for Hiroshima<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXM1lzE6ivUrgthj-05WZwRKMLK_lb6AnYDrkYH8FYebbkQsV57LATrEXrtHb2X4V8VDgQKjVpwRTO_PcEHbQGI0qkpAyUnFj3t0Ga9ol8BhzYaB9A4UEhF8eiz2DdDzh0Yb2fp-0NCq_7XyP05FwfmTcUDqP_sH-wT5xLFY4x-rliB5zT2Mzv9ydOQzJ/s1743/IMG_5306.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1743" data-original-width="1743" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXM1lzE6ivUrgthj-05WZwRKMLK_lb6AnYDrkYH8FYebbkQsV57LATrEXrtHb2X4V8VDgQKjVpwRTO_PcEHbQGI0qkpAyUnFj3t0Ga9ol8BhzYaB9A4UEhF8eiz2DdDzh0Yb2fp-0NCq_7XyP05FwfmTcUDqP_sH-wT5xLFY4x-rliB5zT2Mzv9ydOQzJ/w400-h400/IMG_5306.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Yumie Kono, "Zone of Atomic Blast, Hiroshima, 1945 August 6, 8.15 A.M." </i><br /><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"> YAKEATO MO</div><div style="text-align: left;"> MANATSU NO AME WA</div><div style="text-align: left;"> FURI SOSOGU</div><div style="text-align: left;"> NURE HIKARERU WA</div><div style="text-align: left;"> DARE NO HONE ZOMO</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> the land is burning</div><div style="text-align: left;"> and the middle summer's rain</div><div style="text-align: left;"> steadily drizzling</div><div style="text-align: left;"> wet and glistening those ones</div><div style="text-align: left;"> whose bones are they? I wonder</div><p><span style="background-color: white;">"What happened immediately after the atomic bombing in Hiroshima needed to be recorded," writes</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Hideko Kono in the preface to <i>Genbaku no Uta: Poetry after the Atomic Bomb</i>. "I wrote down my Tanka poems in one breath." </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;">Reaching from the smallest details to cosmic vastness, these searing poems map the shock and grief of devastating loss. Personal loss -- Kono's husband and youngest son were killed in the bombing -- merges with loss of place, community, fellow beings; the devastation of land sits beside devastated lives and futures. </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> OBITADASHIKU</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> GYŪBA TAORESHI</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> KAWASUNA O</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> MICHISHIO NAREBA</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> HITASHI YUKUNARI</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> a multitude of</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> cows and horses have fallen</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> in the river sand</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> as the tide is coming in</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"> they are immersed in water</span></div><p><span style="background-color: white;">Originally published in Kono's 1967 collection </span><i style="background-color: white;">MICHI (The Road)</i><span style="background-color: white;">, these poems are now available in a beautifully produced Japanese-English edition, translated by Yumie Kono and Ariel O'Sullivan.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;">For more than a decade, Hideko Kono's daughter, artist Yumie Kono, worked with poet Ariel O'Sullivan to bring the sixty poems collected here into English. The translation project grew out of a performance piece they developed, together with artist Wendy Skog, incorporating ten of the poems in the original Japanese arranged for multiple voices. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;">"I always wished to write down my experience of the war for my children," Hideko Kono writes in her original preface. Yumie's inherited urgency, she writes in her Foreword, is "to share her poetry so that readers will gain an understanding of one family's experience of war and the atomic bomb."<br /></span></p><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYWFWZchdiWZISzwYokMc4ce-j6vewHrOhnsDfbn4ZXz1nbTQrjcW7D9wsXmAcYCXfsNFL0CaQ_ZAdlK97I80048MwXzYuvsgSj6_dKdcUaKDNUNw2BwyCriEtU0MryVlLzkvA9t5vBIxWzdFfXqvCT_osBQbPMuaEd_CFySl_9ugSlAjg70auu2xn_1X/s3195/IMG_5314.jpeg"><img border="0" data-original-height="678" data-original-width="3195" height="85" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYWFWZchdiWZISzwYokMc4ce-j6vewHrOhnsDfbn4ZXz1nbTQrjcW7D9wsXmAcYCXfsNFL0CaQ_ZAdlK97I80048MwXzYuvsgSj6_dKdcUaKDNUNw2BwyCriEtU0MryVlLzkvA9t5vBIxWzdFfXqvCT_osBQbPMuaEd_CFySl_9ugSlAjg70auu2xn_1X/w400-h85/IMG_5314.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> IKARI NIMO</div><div style="text-align: left;"> TSUKARESHI WARERA</div><div style="text-align: left;"> HITOMORI NO</div><div style="text-align: left;"> HONE ITADAKI TE</div><div style="text-align: left;"> KAERI KITARINU</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> with anger we are</div><div style="text-align: left;"> exhausted and have agreed</div><div style="text-align: left;"> to one bowl's amount</div><div style="text-align: left;"> of these designated bones</div><div style="text-align: left;"> we go back where we came from</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOTGRPSm89grNaEfWGjm1trXbrP4qEYRNtxhaAcgX8tKTCRlZuFG4QW3w-dXG65XHOxOyWTaK7J6WHVL1GJDjRAVAYIOugil7KVstPkY3av8wipeikeh8MnrYP-urlceoGGKn7Pzar2rU_WwcnG_2NaDOaUaqhvJbzgpkuNk3VhkNImtpgcjjbDDdRtBY/s1920/IMG_3875.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOTGRPSm89grNaEfWGjm1trXbrP4qEYRNtxhaAcgX8tKTCRlZuFG4QW3w-dXG65XHOxOyWTaK7J6WHVL1GJDjRAVAYIOugil7KVstPkY3av8wipeikeh8MnrYP-urlceoGGKn7Pzar2rU_WwcnG_2NaDOaUaqhvJbzgpkuNk3VhkNImtpgcjjbDDdRtBY/w266-h400/IMG_3875.jpeg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Installation by Yumie Kono. Image courtesy of Rebecca Leroux</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhNvyD9kUHD5H2eH0sNjwvUfFU55actLE7nAF5eq7uEvYMNmZ_zAUYfA2AV1MKBh-rfvI4QbbyUCIJ4M_EmRDJIH9np2lpL0AqMuhImeBYcdY8gRyppENVGC8BDWC7hGFykzX7_Ct2wVkqlCRGDqw7EztljGcyeWFio1VJNO7gvC4nivCcGUtFFwKsv0vP/s4096/IMG_3910.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2301" data-original-width="4096" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhNvyD9kUHD5H2eH0sNjwvUfFU55actLE7nAF5eq7uEvYMNmZ_zAUYfA2AV1MKBh-rfvI4QbbyUCIJ4M_EmRDJIH9np2lpL0AqMuhImeBYcdY8gRyppENVGC8BDWC7hGFykzX7_Ct2wVkqlCRGDqw7EztljGcyeWFio1VJNO7gvC4nivCcGUtFFwKsv0vP/w400-h225/IMG_3910.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ariel O'Sullivan and Yumie Kono at the Victoria BC launch. Image courtesy of Rebecca Leroux</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL56_oDICHtW9_WMM_POPyBU5aVpaqrJNXU9KPr3LplBcfbodc1bgPHjVDZ0Xe24_NPdiAYXjjTkaNV1ku-eiuNQVGD_MFyVfJRns1FamAogx0X0dr_woewvi5xozNdvTs729wwLxqgUJId3pyJJwFgFnXb0zRcdZxPjQlBF3OB3RUJDdZq6XRJ5LR2E62/s4096/IMG_3929.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4096" data-original-width="2731" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL56_oDICHtW9_WMM_POPyBU5aVpaqrJNXU9KPr3LplBcfbodc1bgPHjVDZ0Xe24_NPdiAYXjjTkaNV1ku-eiuNQVGD_MFyVfJRns1FamAogx0X0dr_woewvi5xozNdvTs729wwLxqgUJId3pyJJwFgFnXb0zRcdZxPjQlBF3OB3RUJDdZq6XRJ5LR2E62/w266-h400/IMG_3929.jpeg" width="266" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Installation by Yumie Kono. Image courtesy of Rebecca Leroux</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"When the bomb was dropped the heat drove the school children into the river," writes Ariel O'Sullivan. "Everything disintegrated except the school uniform buttons. They glistened in the water." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The cover depicts bronze sculptures of the buttons cast by Yumie Kono.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Genbaku no Uta</i> is available from <a href="https://www.munrobooks.com/item/a83FQk8dWOvqrW2ew_ulbQ" target="_blank">Munro's Books</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Genbaku-Uta-Poetry-Atomic-Collection/dp/4896180712/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RW09TO67SLXL&keywords=genbaku+no+Uta&qid=1690925108&sprefix=genbaku+no+uta%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Amazon</a>. To order a signed copy, use the contact form in the left sidebar drop-down menu.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiCvg2qvpPBAYlq7clJStyL4f6cILrdBaIxoOTnOWlj8Ptz-hzIjULkmwdg_AbA0CL2pcPunT8v9iJs0AlVHwGunhTEo-ReBeRUSpJ2El-pDIl0WtKfTwCEA4QPvcSpopNPEBDtV0BlVEbNmLKeTK_TGPbQg1Q3wc4YCL0GErP7oT3jAZkNeIuUWwaggKy/s2837/IMG_5305.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2837" data-original-width="2834" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiCvg2qvpPBAYlq7clJStyL4f6cILrdBaIxoOTnOWlj8Ptz-hzIjULkmwdg_AbA0CL2pcPunT8v9iJs0AlVHwGunhTEo-ReBeRUSpJ2El-pDIl0WtKfTwCEA4QPvcSpopNPEBDtV0BlVEbNmLKeTK_TGPbQg1Q3wc4YCL0GErP7oT3jAZkNeIuUWwaggKy/w400-h400/IMG_5305.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-66199092104723270232023-06-21T09:30:00.001-04:002023-06-21T09:30:00.137-04:00Hello from the Ocean: Ecotone 33<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqFg0KoRC9bXdyoqe9oWjENVPCPF5lYYowM0ytuxTuLZZvm_XAb_x3UdE0CV4ef6OXhophZlMQK-7v6Ok-9d6gjjR0g36_BvQdttKgme4rPKNSYSksHdSajeU4yMVGztChyeBOy11uu1BYHzsBn55Ikd6JGs4k-vS_TrcM-1RQREvIW1G5YqFCIWVA1Tw/s3024/IMG_5125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqFg0KoRC9bXdyoqe9oWjENVPCPF5lYYowM0ytuxTuLZZvm_XAb_x3UdE0CV4ef6OXhophZlMQK-7v6Ok-9d6gjjR0g36_BvQdttKgme4rPKNSYSksHdSajeU4yMVGztChyeBOy11uu1BYHzsBn55Ikd6JGs4k-vS_TrcM-1RQREvIW1G5YqFCIWVA1Tw/w400-h400/IMG_5125.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Vanessa Barragão, <i>Bleached Coral</i>, 2022</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Repurposed/discarded wool & lyocell, jute, LED lighting<br /> </span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"Hello from the ocean," reads the first line of editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell's letter in a recent issue of <i><a href="https://ecotonemagazine.org/shop/issue-33/" target="_blank">Ecotone</a>,</i> the North Carolina-based literary journal focused on place. </p><p>As a reader and writer born and raised in Nova Scotia ("Canada's Ocean Playground"), ardent tideline shell-seeker, and fan of Sue Goyette's book-length poem <i>Ocean, </i>I opened this themed issue with appetite, and have kept it close at hand for weeks now. </p><p>There's a lot of beauty bursting out of its pages, especially Vanessa Barragão's incredibly intricate works in repurposed fibre, and no small amount of sober reflection on the climate crisis in prose and poetry. </p><p>The pages I keep going back to, though (so often the journal falls open there), are three poems by poet and novelist Yuko Taniguchi. "Two Views (After Tsunami)", "A House's View" and "Fishes' View" reach inside me the way few poems do. They turn inside out everything I know about tsunami and other other climate events experienced as human disasters. They locate me in the heart of tsunami -- and in doing so, locate tsunami stories in my heart. </p><p>I can't imagine a more complete reimagining of place than this. To see more of Yuko Taniguchi's work, and other content from this issue, visit <a href="https://ecotonemagazine.org/shop/issue-33/">Ecotone 33.</a></p><p> Yuko Taniguchi</p><div style="text-align: left;"> A HOUSE'S VIEW</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> It feels strange to become a boat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> I was the house for a fisherman's family for five generations.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The men got up early while the outside was dark,</div><div style="text-align: left;"> fished all day and came home.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> They took hot baths in my tub</div><div style="text-align: left;"> and slept on my tatami floor.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Sinking down into the ocean, I am filled</div><div style="text-align: left;"> with the scent of their hands.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRw3evLHniX9TtBAz6WzKmpWenMHTxttPY0ylnWK7-sbCrGsvUAnWyDSWkKG793g30MxpJI6I3jsryx_xMrWLUDRNcnVIwjZziYE842H2EMdJQK2c7Zq83_YVaSQWTbxHH2OzH-xBCajmJaU-hM6oDS8bK2DQz5BZfvin9EJRy08lTNfjKCoUFv4Ywxhl/s2804/IMG_5128.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2804" data-original-width="2804" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRw3evLHniX9TtBAz6WzKmpWenMHTxttPY0ylnWK7-sbCrGsvUAnWyDSWkKG793g30MxpJI6I3jsryx_xMrWLUDRNcnVIwjZziYE842H2EMdJQK2c7Zq83_YVaSQWTbxHH2OzH-xBCajmJaU-hM6oDS8bK2DQz5BZfvin9EJRy08lTNfjKCoUFv4Ywxhl/w400-h400/IMG_5128.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Vanessa Barragão, Botanical (detail), 2018-2019<br />Repurposed /discarded wool & lyocell, jute</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Words and images by kind permission of the editors and makers. Please visit and support <a href="https://ecotonemagazine.org/about/" target="_blank">Ecotone: Reimagining Place</a></i></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-26356226406375157212023-05-09T07:30:00.000-04:002023-05-09T08:10:15.653-04:00Also No Fear: On Carl Phillips's "Cathedral"<div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeB4vBCKgDMykTcrppt8vRaWX8QIPull9brv6Rev4HbWE9AHours_m-Oi7lgsMV-tk713DaDNrzia1TkBGJS_K6OhR0AEsjkbnM5aTMWT9003g5VQ136wkbkp2ifousJcD2hqHjg2otwaJIS_VupHcrC1axRNtC1_-rHJCYaSq8591JFQN7zzec8UObA/s720/Carl%20Phillips%20by%20Reston.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Carl Phillips by Reston Allen" border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeB4vBCKgDMykTcrppt8vRaWX8QIPull9brv6Rev4HbWE9AHours_m-Oi7lgsMV-tk713DaDNrzia1TkBGJS_K6OhR0AEsjkbnM5aTMWT9003g5VQ136wkbkp2ifousJcD2hqHjg2otwaJIS_VupHcrC1axRNtC1_-rHJCYaSq8591JFQN7zzec8UObA/w320-h320/Carl%20Phillips%20by%20Reston.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Carl Phillips<br /> CATHEDRAL</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> And suddenly - strangely - there was also no fear, either.</div><p style="text-align: left;"> As a horse in harness to what, inevitably, must break it.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> No torch; no lantern - and yet no hiddenness, now. No hiding.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> Leaves flew through where the wind sent them flying.</p><p style="text-align: left;"> (<i>from</i> Double Shadow, <i>quoted in "Politics," </i><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300257878/my-trade-is-mystery/" target="_blank">My Trade is Mystery</a>, <i>Yale 2022</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What strikes me first: the poem's immediacy. "Cathedral" enters its subject without preamble, calls itself from the page directly to my imagination. Something has just happened, resulting in an absence of fear and hiding (along with something else, unnamed beyond “also”). Whatever it is involves breaking, darkness, and, paradoxically, exposure. Event or turn of thought, it happens off stage. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The poem articulates a precise moment of shift by pinning it to stasis, to a <i>now</i> in which a <i>just then</i> is implied. Not a lantern going out; just, no lantern. Not fear rushing out; simply no fear. And "no hiddenness, now."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The only physical movement is seen in the leaves, which <i>have been</i> sent flying. (When? I feel it as just a moment ago.) In this place of stillness, the action of the wind is ferocious: those leaves weren't just stirring, but flying. And not just flying; s<i>ent</i> flying. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As if in their wake, the poem begins. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As if the force acting on the leaves has acted on the speaker, to remove fear, shadow, hiding.... As if inevitable. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It matters that the self is <i>without fear</i>, not fearless, a term that implies brave action. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm struck by the poem's voice, its sure-footedness (almost equine) as each line moves through phrase, through pause, towards its end, picks up again at each beginning. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There’s a whole catalogue of resonances this strikes for me: Kinds of transcendence I've read in Cavafy (in translation; it makes me want a Carl Phillips Cavafy!). Formal echoes of the Tang poets (also in translation): situation, recognition, observation. Those leaves, wind-blown not only through place, but through their own flying! And some of the mystery Alice Oswald captures in <i>Nobody, </i>in long lines built on simile; I'm tossed into essential strangeness and set down in the eternally happening moment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I first encountered "Cathedral" in Phillips's essay "Politics," on the fraught subject of poetry and identity. Offering it as a closing argument, Phillips asks, "Is this a Black poem? A queer poem? Why or why not and who says." Read in this context, the poem exceeds such markers, soars into metaphysical realms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s also the closing poem of the intense and intimate collection <i>Double Shadow</i>. In this context, the space of the book, where identity markers are more traceable, where things are at once themselves and other, seeming and shifting, corporeality is more pronounced, and the poem's giving-over feels ultimate. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Which "Cathedral" is richer? The one I’m reading as a stand-alone? Or the one I’m reading in its community of poems about being and the world, the body, love, the wilderness of existence? The poem performs a wonderful illusion, a trick of light: seen from one angle, it's a glossy leaf. Seen from another, it's veined and granular. Each version outshines its particulars.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, a few more notes: Tolstoy's Prince Andrei under a lofty sky, in awe, waiting for his death (which doesn't come just then, only later). The young strongman tied up in Gwendolyn MacEwan's ravishing <u><span style="color: blue;">"Manzini: Escape Artist"</span></u>, the ropes transformed into his very body, the observer's awe "now there are no bonds except the flesh." (In "Cathedral," the stakes are raised; the body itself becomes the means of liberation.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And (in a stretch, maybe too much, but it persists, turns up in more than one poem in this book), Donne of the Holy Sonnets, restless and testing, transcendent, marrying the corporeal to the holy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____ </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Years ago in a classroom a student struggling to recall the word </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">body </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">arrived at </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">charnel envelope</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Phillips's way of transcendence - through the body - reminds me of this.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span face="-webkit-standard, serif">____</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Carl Phillips's most recent book is </i><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374603762/thenthewar" target="_blank">Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020</a>, <i>winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Image of Carl Phillips by Reston Allen. </i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>"Cathedral" appears by permission of the author. </i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Visit </i><a href="https://www.carlphillipspoet.com/about">carlphillipspoet.com</a></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-56124007938029858392023-04-24T09:40:00.002-04:002023-04-24T09:40:27.245-04:00Frances Boyle: A Poem<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiz-taUrnTV73uTdehVz5LPRk5p7aUkDZXw0jnDqM_XNWzr9DITsCVxPYiZDL080pmASTz1fACBIlDPP6CC6ndzWdNb4kMLnEiZ5pimKuJutyuuoS7P2Ongep-xo9ZIYqdA6juEYgeUFy4Zd9mkHYnrss-TYib6CPmN7eNksCUdD8JiQzycp5z6NLmFA/s973/April%202023%20-%20credit%20Miranda%20Krogstad.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="887" data-original-width="973" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiz-taUrnTV73uTdehVz5LPRk5p7aUkDZXw0jnDqM_XNWzr9DITsCVxPYiZDL080pmASTz1fACBIlDPP6CC6ndzWdNb4kMLnEiZ5pimKuJutyuuoS7P2Ongep-xo9ZIYqdA6juEYgeUFy4Zd9mkHYnrss-TYib6CPmN7eNksCUdD8JiQzycp5z6NLmFA/s320/April%202023%20-%20credit%20Miranda%20Krogstad.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Frances Boyle<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">The Sky is Unnatural<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 180pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Shrovetide, the banishing of winter <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">A morning of dawn-treading, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">a rented cottage, a marshy lake.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Yawning noon after sleepwalking. A parade<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">of tiny ants, redolent of old rites, fears<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">converted to straw-stuffed rags. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">A rough-made doll.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Blue-black vibrations, worn-out moon<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">wanes. Two fish—no, there’s a third— <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">whiskery fish invisible in water, bump<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">against logs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> The abstract shame that surfaces <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">in memory, a shape filled by twisting<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">vines that grow along my nerve endings <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">as a bounty of zucchini spreads<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">in the cold frame. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">I check<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">my phone the way I used to smoke:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">to distract, to pull myself away from intensity<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">to boredom.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> The jar <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">empties, the jar will refill, and a courgette<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">seems to be a cucumber when I reach <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">for it in the crisper. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">The sturgeon bright, the salmon bright, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">but which is which? The way I look <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> at the bathing <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">moon realigns my face to the active crime <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">of not knowing. The sky is unnatural.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">If this shell <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">is hard to drink from, I’ll scoop up <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">what’s calm, what’s beautiful. I’ll place<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">gladiolas on this beribboned doll, the burning<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Marzanna, fill her arms <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">with poppies. But I must not<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">look upon the effigy, drowned, aflame, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">or s\he’ll inhabit me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> I shift<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">from complicity to focus, a ghostly habit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">Hairy stems, scraps of red <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">will mark her whelming, and mine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> The Marzanna sits up, ripples wash. And I <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">surge upward, rise from the shallows, grasping<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;">vines that float upon my palms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"> <i> from </i>Openwork and Limestone<i>, by permission</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Frances Boyle’s most recent book is </i>Openwork and Limestone<i> (Frontenac House 2022). Her first novel, </i>Skin Hunger<i>, </i><i>is forthcoming from The</i><span style="font-style: italic;"> Porcupine’s Quill in 2024. Raised on the prairies, Frances has long lived in Ottawa on unceded and unsurrended Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory. Visit her at </span><a href="http://www.francesboyle.com/" style="color: blue; font-style: italic;">www.francesboyle.com</a>.<i> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Photo by </i><i>Miranda Krogstad</i></span></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-90515374940854386892023-04-24T09:40:00.000-04:002023-04-24T09:40:06.492-04:00Dreamy Liquidity: Frances Boyle Reads Gwendolyn MacEwen<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665px;"><span style="background-color: white;">Gwendolyn MacEwen</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 21.466665px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Dark Pines Under Water</b></span></span><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.866667px; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 26.65pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This land like a mirror turns you inward<br />And you become a forest in a furtive lake;<br />The dark pines of your mind reach downward,<br />You dream in the green of your time,<br />Your memory is a row of sinking pines.<br /><br />Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for<br />Although it is good here, and green;<br />You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,<br />You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.<br /><br />But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper<br />And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper<br />In an elementary world;<br />There is something down there and you want it told.</span></p> <i> (from</i><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>The Shadow-Maker.<i> Toronto: Macmillan, 1969</i><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.866667px; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 26.65pt;"><i> and </i>Gwendolyn MacEwen Volume One: The Early Years<i>, Exile Editions, 1993)</i></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><i>Frances Boyle writes: </i>Gwendolyn MacEwen’s “Dark Pines Under Water” has long been one of my favourites but I at first hesitated to claim it. The poem has been so extensively anthologized and analyzed that I assumed everyone must be familiar with it. But, when a thread on Twitter earlier this year highlighted three of MacEwen’s poems as “Forgotten Good Poems”, I realized that collective memory can be short, and that it’s worth re-focusing attention on formative poems.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>I love this poem for many reasons. The landscape that is both interior and lushly physical. The way the tempo and syntax changes from verse to verse, from line to line, with dreamy liquidity alongside ponderous weight. The enjambment of “sleeper / In an elementary world” among largely end-stopped lines. The knells of the true rhyme in the first two lines of the last stanza, and the slant and near rhymes throughout. The repetition of phrases and words: “the dark pines of your mind”, “sinking”, “dream” and “green”, all evoking the mirror of the first line’s simile. The reader feels the pull of these psychological depths; from the outset “inward” is paired with “downward”. But what “kind of largeness”, what “heavy grace”, what “anguished dream” did the “you” of the poem make a journey to find before being drawn down to tell, or witness a telling?<br /><br />Among all the compelling elements of “Dark Pines Under Water”, for me the passionate insistence of the last line and its probing of mystery remains the most resonant. MacEwen’s luxurious imagery coalesces in the urgency of the truth-seeking.<div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.866667px; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Read Frances's poem <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/04/frances-boyle-poem.html" target="_blank">"The Sky is Unnatural" here</a></i></span></p></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-29721611346216159952023-04-12T09:30:00.038-04:002023-04-24T09:42:03.689-04:00A Certain Day: Beth Follett and the Intimacy of Voice<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuJUr6gQleaYiUiYtKsGMm9mMZt7RvfTfroNdL9ESpbch11W_6ao951GcnAxJKOUmSmEikThx4NYqTpHm3PuC70n9sFZWUOkj8RBxgwRA61WxDMpEI3jj5RiFpTzD8UogsYlwRlf2XcrIl2Mwrx6StGccV0L1bOL2ZzBlFAEQGChN-8GhvL0260H0pQ/s2448/Image%202023-04-04%20at%2010.29%20AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2392" data-original-width="2448" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuJUr6gQleaYiUiYtKsGMm9mMZt7RvfTfroNdL9ESpbch11W_6ao951GcnAxJKOUmSmEikThx4NYqTpHm3PuC70n9sFZWUOkj8RBxgwRA61WxDMpEI3jj5RiFpTzD8UogsYlwRlf2XcrIl2Mwrx6StGccV0L1bOL2ZzBlFAEQGChN-8GhvL0260H0pQ/s320/Image%202023-04-04%20at%2010.29%20AM.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I begin this practice by choosing three poems—the two below, and a third, “Beads,” by Olga Sedakova, translated from the Russian by Martha Kelly. I read each one aloud, to experience the poem through the intimacy of my own voice, my own body. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;"><i>My Debt (Jane Hirshfield)</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Like all</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">who believe in the senses,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I was an accountant,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">copyist,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">statistician.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Not registrar,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">witness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Permitted to touch</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">the leaf of a thistle,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">the trembling</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">work of a spider.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">To ponder the Hubble’s recordings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">It did not matter</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">if I believed in</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">the party of particle or of wave,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">as I carried no weapon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">It did not matter if I believed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I weighed ashes,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">actions,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">cities that glittered like rubies,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">on the scales I was given,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">calibrated</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">in units of fear and amazement.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I wrote the word </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">it</span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">, the word </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">is</span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p></div></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I entered the debt that is owed to the real.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Forgive,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">spine-covered leaf, soft-bodied spider,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">octopus lifting</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">one curious tentacle back toward the hand of the diver</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">that in such black ink</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I set down your flammable colours.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">—<i>from </i></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Ledger<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">(Knopf, 2020)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">**<br /><i>Variation on a Theme by Rilke </i>(</span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 16px;">Denise Levertov)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">A certain day became a presence to me;</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">a being. And before it started to descend</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">from the height of noon, it leaned over</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">and struck my shoulder as if with</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">the flat of a sword, granting me</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">honour and a task. The day's blow</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">and what I heard was my whole self</span><span style="font-family: LucidaGrande; font-size: 12pt;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">saying and singing what it knew: I can.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">— <i>from </i></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Breathing the Water<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">(New Directions, 1987) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir;">**</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">The two poems included here are the ones to land in me with considerable emotional force, particularly Denise Levertov’s. So hers is the one I choose to write about for Concrete & River.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">(I encourage you to read both poems aloud, to see if one opens you up to more subtle responses, either emotional or somatic. Drop any attempt to understand the poem in </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">the reading, and simply pay attention to how it lands. A resonance in the voice, perhaps, a long pause, a concertina-ed awareness of time during the speaking of a phrase, can help us to develop valuable lines of inquiry as we pursue poems further and more deeply.)</span></p></div></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 3"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">I directed a Creative Writing program for seven years at a children’s art camp. Many times I read aloud Rilke’s </span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt; font-style: oblique;">Letters to a Young Poet</span><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">, for the beauty of the lines, yes, and also for its theme of the pursuit of the difficult. He writes, “It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” Was difficulty the theme Levertov wished to explore? I wonder. There is her word ‘confront.’ There are her words ‘struck,’ ‘blow,’ ‘sword.’ A confrontation. A disruption. By a being equal to the sun’s immensity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">And what is the sun? Our very livelihood, our clock, our daily bread.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">The speaker’s experience is singular. A ‘certain day.’ Not every day or any day, but a profound, life-changing day on which she awakens to capacity, to ‘can.' A bell-ringing awakening, such as on an Easter or Christmas morning. I have read that Levertov considered herself Christian, which may help us as we interrogate the metaphor of the bell, though other religions use bells to call their practitioners to prayer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">The speaker is ‘struck’ by the presence of a being as by a queen who grants knighthood, and by that strike experiences an awakening, an honour bestowed, and a task. What is the task?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps the speaker’s task is to question the experience of waking into self-knowledge and of the singular transition from ‘ cannot' to ‘ can,' the experience itself being the honour. She felt a presence, she saw it, she heard it. And thereafter she said it, she sang it. She did not overlook it, she did not keep the experience to herself. It may be a poet’s task to say, to sing, to ‘ring the bells that still can ring’ — to be bell.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">And how beautiful, that Levertov’s poem, published in 1987, rings down the years to reanimate the reader who comes upon the poem, as I did, unwittingly, on a certain day recently, striking me as the very thing I needed to recommit to ‘my whole self.’</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">It strikes us, we say. An honour. And a task.</span></p></div></div></div></div><div class="page" title="Page 4"><div class="section" style="background-color: white;"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: Avenir; font-size: 12pt;">—Beth Follett</span></p><p><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">BETH FOLLETT lives in St. John’s NL. Her novel </i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Instructor</span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">, published by Breakwater in 2021, was longlisted for the 2022 NL Book Award for Fiction, and won Bronze in Literary Fiction, Forward Indies Awards.</i></p></div></div></div></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-73834598683020679012023-04-06T09:40:00.001-04:002023-04-06T09:40:00.172-04:00The Answer is Purple: Maria Gacesa in Conversation <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maria Gacesa chatted with me about her creative practice and her poem </span>“<a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/04/maria-gacesa-poem.html" target="_blank">Aria on the 3:50 to St-Lambert</a>.” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">SUSAN GILLIS: How did you find your way to poetry--or it to you?</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MARIA GACESA: Ms Mitchell had a copy of <i>Where the Sidewalk Ends</i> in my grade 3 classroom, so Shel Silverstein very likely had something to do with it. Also, English is not my parents’ mother tongue (though it is mine), so issues around language and word play were a big part of growing up, as was letter writing—I had several long-term pen pals. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Poetry, specifically, is attractive to me because I think it allows access to an expressive mode most similar to dance and music, both of which play into my practice in life and art. Practising life! Yes!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SG:</i><i> </i><i>Music “revisits things”, the poem says, and then shows a series of likenesses, both heard and seen, that music seems to be giving shape to, at least in part. I’m curious: when you’re out in the world, does the environment shape the music you’re listening to on a device, if you are doing that? Or maybe the other way around, does the music you’re listening to shape the environment?<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MG: Trying to answer this question is a bit like taking that right-brain / left-brain test that asks whether you see the horse walking backwards or forwards. Strange as it is, the answer is purple. I don’t generally listen to anything while I’m walking, but will occasionally listen to music when I find myself on public transit, like I was when I wrote<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Aria.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>The music and environment combine into something new, then remain alloyed in my memory. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">SG: What’s currently on your am-reading/am-listening list?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MG: I’m hooked on the CBC PlayME podcast. The audio plays are superbly produced—truly "bingeable audio dramas,” just as advertised, and there are SO many. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the last year I’ve been listening to Ann Southam’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Rivers<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>sets for solo piano on repeat. Its effect on me is grounding; their basic matter must have become as intrinsic to Southam as her own DNA, such was her commitment to this masterwork of endless, painstaking creativity. Infinity in confined spaces, indeed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lastly, it must be spring because I’ve also been happily immersed in the gorgeous sensory world of <i>Pluviophile</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> by Yusuf Saadi.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">__<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maria Gacesa is a writer and classical musician. Her poetry has appeared in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The Lyric Magazin</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">e and her one-act play, “MOTH," was a prizewinner in the 2021 Norma Epstein Foundation for Creative Writing Awards. She works in arts advocacy and education at The Préville Fine Arts Centre, on Montreal’s South shore. Read <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/04/maria-gacesa-poem.html" target="_blank">"Aria on the 3:50 to St-Lambert" here</a>.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZblzdsDDf7txSDcFSYhvL6x_TohxgtLoE0aRT8LZJivT_3zNxpMb7Zsj0kf8YemGiCOVig_gibwTfhOvWXhQZFkkXk8ZQNcGm5FCEk9H45FZltoeMNCP2IA27iStBGkzRMFXdYFOjcalpt_oMQd4NszKWgpietZzFvilX0R6zYNDwbnMWqNrxl1Hu2Q/s505/Self%20portrait.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="505" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZblzdsDDf7txSDcFSYhvL6x_TohxgtLoE0aRT8LZJivT_3zNxpMb7Zsj0kf8YemGiCOVig_gibwTfhOvWXhQZFkkXk8ZQNcGm5FCEk9H45FZltoeMNCP2IA27iStBGkzRMFXdYFOjcalpt_oMQd4NszKWgpietZzFvilX0R6zYNDwbnMWqNrxl1Hu2Q/s320/Self%20portrait.jpeg" width="304" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Self-portrait by Maria Gacesa</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-61433010239200174002023-04-06T09:35:00.000-04:002023-04-06T09:35:00.153-04:00Maria Gacesa: A Poem<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBa0e1hCgotXwVT2MLYo54nWIPjqp2niwCBUiuXmKuNrgstf4TeEGfHVOQo6HJ34QWdzCzWG01GrBJOPe5FD_jBG52BAdOmRj8wMTp-RPZr8r_mYYwKLw9UWkmJSvZ8yQPtv9alMWd11uLM14JIN8XHJWg7giZkybHLghSgxG6taxcgKBlAqrCJWGew/s386/Maria%20Photo.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="386" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBa0e1hCgotXwVT2MLYo54nWIPjqp2niwCBUiuXmKuNrgstf4TeEGfHVOQo6HJ34QWdzCzWG01GrBJOPe5FD_jBG52BAdOmRj8wMTp-RPZr8r_mYYwKLw9UWkmJSvZ8yQPtv9alMWd11uLM14JIN8XHJWg7giZkybHLghSgxG6taxcgKBlAqrCJWGew/s320/Maria%20Photo.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Maria Gacesa</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS; font-size: 12pt;">ARIA ON THE 3:50 TO ST-LAMBERT</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">All of this</span><span lang="FR"> from </span><span lang="EN-US">two hands </span><span lang="FR">one </span><span lang="EN-US">heart</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">p</span><span lang="EN-US">hrases discourse digress</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">n</span><span lang="EN-US">ever one direct line</span><span lang="FR"> r</span><span lang="EN-US">arely </span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">the bombast of surety</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">m</span><span lang="EN-US">usic is insecure maybe</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">i</span><span lang="EN-US">t revisits things</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">l</span><span lang="EN-US">ike Philip Glass counting</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">y</span><span lang="EN-US">ou tak</span><span lang="FR">e</span><span lang="EN-US"> for granted a pattern for predictable</span><span lang="FR"> s</span><span lang="EN-US">o</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">turn your head</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">and you’re somewhere new</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Th</span><span lang="FR">e wheels orbit below in time</span><span lang="EN-US"> like the aria</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">deliberate l</span><span lang="EN-US">ike the one-way signs the piles of snow and the John Deeres lined up in the lot</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">like the patio set</span><span lang="FR"> left </span><span lang="EN-US">as though someone just stepped inside for another bottle of wine</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="FR">t</span><span lang="EN-US">hen it snowed</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">___</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/04/the-answer-is-purple-maria-gacesa-in.html" target="_blank">Maria Gacesa in conversation:</a> "Poetry, specifically, is attractive to me because I think it allows access to an expressive mode most similar to dance and music, <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/04/the-answer-is-purple-maria-gacesa-in.html" target="_blank">both of which play into my practice in life and art..."</a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">Maria Gacesa is a writer and classical musician. Her poetry has appeared in </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">The Lyric Magazin</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">e <i>and her one-act play, “MOTH," was a prizewinner in the 2021 Norma Epstein Foundation for Creative Writing Awards. She works in arts advocacy and education at The Préville Fine Arts Centre, on Montreal’s South shore. </i></span></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-6217431062018807082023-03-29T09:30:00.010-04:002023-03-31T17:02:31.990-04:00Tolu Oloruntoba: A Poem<div style="text-align: left;">Tolu Oloruntoba</div><div style="text-align: left;">AD79 </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Vesuvius horse --</div><div style="text-align: left;">a gelding, obviously --</div><div style="text-align: left;">harnessed still and petrified</div><div style="text-align: left;">these 1940 years,</div><div style="text-align: left;">is saddled for the ride</div><div style="text-align: left;">the masters never made</div><div style="text-align: left;">to the mountains.</div><div style="text-align: left;">All that grooming and shoeing,</div><div style="text-align: left;">to be bound still, even in death.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Archaeologists will find us</div><div style="text-align: left;">encased, one in tent city</div><div style="text-align: left;">tarp, the other half</div><div style="text-align: left;">in Styrofoam, chained</div><div style="text-align: left;">to phone cable and extension cord,</div><div style="text-align: left;">winning the penultimate round,</div><div style="text-align: left;">but losing the last together,</div><div style="text-align: left;">obviously, as old stars</div><div style="text-align: left;">and new satellites bear witness</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">to our time-lapse:</div><div style="text-align: left;">glowing, whisking, gone already.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>-- from </i><a href="https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/the-junta-of-happenstance/" target="_blank">The Junta of Happenstance</a><i>, by permission </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Tolu Oloruntoba notes that this poem is based on the story of the </i><i><a href="http://pompeiisites.org/en/press-kit-en/intact-cast-of-a-horse-created-for-the-first-time-at-pompeii/" target="_blank">archaeological find of the Vesuvius horse in excavations at the site of the Pompeii eruption.</a></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5noo5hn3ia_PtKDgfaNUPvPSI6xeDyQpnPj_ZlB1hUUIhvXBZSSoVECc0gVMx32-ApvJWICM8xzQzV-F3LQQnBaITZi3MQuuLBh2hmz0Ary0p-_1EJOQ-Tccxyk1UqiJMI1I_NyM5-CQr2W36cxBLv7a606acY5qrN8x5zby4zvpzlEbzqsz9nv3XYg/s396/Side-Junta_with-GG-seal-Griffin-seal_low-res.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="396" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5noo5hn3ia_PtKDgfaNUPvPSI6xeDyQpnPj_ZlB1hUUIhvXBZSSoVECc0gVMx32-ApvJWICM8xzQzV-F3LQQnBaITZi3MQuuLBh2hmz0Ary0p-_1EJOQ-Tccxyk1UqiJMI1I_NyM5-CQr2W36cxBLv7a606acY5qrN8x5zby4zvpzlEbzqsz9nv3XYg/s320/Side-Junta_with-GG-seal-Griffin-seal_low-res.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Time collapses. </i><i>Look once, look again. Where</i><i> are we when the future comes looking? What are we bound to? </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Dazzling language here and all through this book. And after the dazzlement, such depths! Thanks to Tolu and Palimpsest Press for permission to reproduce this poem. </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-83191409521998498512023-03-17T10:49:00.003-04:002023-03-17T10:49:38.224-04:00Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang: A Poem<div style="text-align: left;">Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang</div><div style="text-align: left;">#<span style="font-size: medium;">M</span>E<span style="font-size: medium;">T</span>OO</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>"Language is the house with lamplight in its windows / visible </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>across the fields...."</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"> --Anne Michaels</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Language is the house with lamplight in its windows</div><div style="text-align: left;">but the body is a grassy field</div><div style="text-align: left;">filled to the brim with starlight.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Slip among the dark blades --</div><div style="text-align: left;">you are that creature</div><div style="text-align: left;">who is both prey</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">and predator. Lamplight is</div><div style="text-align: left;">a caged fury. Wouldn't this house</div><div style="text-align: left;">look brilliant on fire,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">an imploding </div><div style="text-align: left;">star,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">reaching out?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>from</i> <a href="https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/grappling-hook/" target="_blank">Grappling Hook</a> (<i>Palimpsest / Anstruther, 2022), by permission</i></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-54988224949850712062023-02-16T13:41:00.001-05:002023-02-19T16:31:49.291-05:00On David O'Meara's "Days"<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeAdO-j4Lhe7SRvhCPWTCeo1MBj7stHuflEgC9DmMFMEdQYRkDJOpvr4gDVEzOcGEp5ThHlmi23BRuyK7pe5wPZDtHEiv3OKLs-2K8S2X-Fxj4EFvuh0M9CKpMv5Mej9rsE_BFBdr4JWwbCWUzq5WVv-xQDRlt1LE2qfTRPW5YTUcwEvdZGFDks7Fww/s4032/71DF5901-4AA0-46F0-9BCF-AB441E8E0F17.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgeAdO-j4Lhe7SRvhCPWTCeo1MBj7stHuflEgC9DmMFMEdQYRkDJOpvr4gDVEzOcGEp5ThHlmi23BRuyK7pe5wPZDtHEiv3OKLs-2K8S2X-Fxj4EFvuh0M9CKpMv5Mej9rsE_BFBdr4JWwbCWUzq5WVv-xQDRlt1LE2qfTRPW5YTUcwEvdZGFDks7Fww/w300-h400/71DF5901-4AA0-46F0-9BCF-AB441E8E0F17.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ottawa poet David O'Meara taking a short break</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/01/david-omeara-poem.html" target="_blank">question that launches David O'Meara's poem "Days"</a> turns on how we move through time and what we carry with us, as knowledge and memory of place, event and identity. "Something" we've forgotten nags when we go out, like a black box signalling the location of wreckage. That familiar discomfort: what did we leave behind? Not just what did we forget to bring, but what is it, there, that we're putting at a distance?</p><p>"Days" is one of a dozen and a half poems in <i>Masses on Radar </i>that take a mirroring four-stanza form, a three-liner followed by a four-liner, then the reverse. Placed among poems whose forms are more open, more like certain kinds of walks, they bring a grounding grace to the collection, rest stops for the mind where it can pause for a short ritual. This formal range -- which includes an elegy composed in quietly chiming couplets -- is one of the many things I admire and enjoy about this book. </p><p>In "Days," the not-quite-remembered may not be signalled by the black box of wreckage, but instead by a transforming "high voice" calling down the long streets of the past, across time and place, across experience and gathered knowledge. At the centre, a casual demand for proof of identity and belonging, like a decoy from the poem's recognition that we think we can go out and come back and nothing will be changed. We forget, for awhile, while time is suspended, that it is also passing and has passed, that everything changes and has changed. We go on, the poem tells us, as though nothing has changed. The high voice, like the voice of the dead or the divine, calls out across time and place, across history. The jolt of the particular: "as if we'd rush back," across continents and a decade, to "my father still alive" among the mundane and familiar. </p><p>How strange, the way we carry on with our lives after anything happens, loss especially, almost, but not quite, as though it hasn't happened. That's the "ah" of recognition I keep coming back to when I read this poem. </p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-66824832110183585292023-02-16T13:00:00.001-05:002023-02-19T16:31:10.592-05:00DAVID O'MEARA: A POEM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFK6yJii0o5rDLcsLNNGY6dkO5Mri6fjiEeqA8UiW3qnQcylvE7PV6vIyRsYN8PU8Bi-8Jctp8HD6cRu0_F_4ti3EL8S9Q4Tv1KYylleNAZnWOo2OBBebr794S9_7npUT6-SKJT6SLdVQSFAMLPFU57SQcUPLj5OgQi5HNw5_5EBhohFc88BdJ3MgpA/s852/9037BC87-19F2-4957-8AAA-A5D84DC37B45.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="568" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVFK6yJii0o5rDLcsLNNGY6dkO5Mri6fjiEeqA8UiW3qnQcylvE7PV6vIyRsYN8PU8Bi-8Jctp8HD6cRu0_F_4ti3EL8S9Q4Tv1KYylleNAZnWOo2OBBebr794S9_7npUT6-SKJT6SLdVQSFAMLPFU57SQcUPLj5OgQi5HNw5_5EBhohFc88BdJ3MgpA/w266-h400/9037BC87-19F2-4957-8AAA-A5D84DC37B45.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">David O'Meara</div><div style="text-align: left;">DAYS</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We keep forgetting something back there, don't we?</div><div style="text-align: left;">We pop out the door, turn corners, the shops unchanged,</div><div style="text-align: left;">but data nags like a black box has signalled</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">from the wreckage, or a high voice is calling down</div><div style="text-align: left;">a long street across medians of statued piazzas,</div><div style="text-align: left;">river bends, concert halls (vertigo in the nosebleeds), barista</div><div style="text-align: left;">beards at homogeneous counters, X-rayed luggage,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>passport please</i>, carousel fatigue, caffeinated reveries in taxis,</div><div style="text-align: left;">the balcony's very non-sea view, our frugal mattress picnics</div><div style="text-align: left;">watching own-goals in stoppage time, the must-sees we didn't, phone</div><div style="text-align: left;">calls, emails, our return's fine-toothing of apartment vacancies</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">with thoughts that nothing would change, as if we'd rush back</div><div style="text-align: left;">through traffic, across three continents, a decade, to find</div><div style="text-align: left;">my father still alive, the cat at its bowl, and the iron left on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>from </i><a href="https://chbooks.com/Books/M/Masses-on-Radar" target="_blank">Masses on Radar</a><i> (Coach House, 2021). Reproduced with permission of the author</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWSEvL3yus5n4TuyJR8h6abKMlw4d1nvWRbHmaJV5pGO9YV8xmCfPVInnv9dPy-50o4i0AhiM6uznW6bqzVRiwIjVbhpyqBYJJX65jQub4CBAb4-XboSfkKIKSmi_7jjGXDW5ItMT0dctsVY9Hx5ghqrop8uHvQOv68LhNnZUaSkiIfDcfFYXkJ5V7Q/s1440/OMeara.Masses%20on%20radar.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOWSEvL3yus5n4TuyJR8h6abKMlw4d1nvWRbHmaJV5pGO9YV8xmCfPVInnv9dPy-50o4i0AhiM6uznW6bqzVRiwIjVbhpyqBYJJX65jQub4CBAb4-XboSfkKIKSmi_7jjGXDW5ItMT0dctsVY9Hx5ghqrop8uHvQOv68LhNnZUaSkiIfDcfFYXkJ5V7Q/w400-h640/OMeara.Masses%20on%20radar.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-15716582040829761372023-02-02T10:00:00.008-05:002023-02-21T10:51:16.358-05:00SHERI BENNING: FIELD REQUIEM, THREE PARTS <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">SHERI BENNING</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"><i>from</i> Let Them Rest (<i>Field Requiem</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">…dies illa <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Solvet sæclum in favilla<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></p><p><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> - </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Dies Irae</span></p><p><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US">1 Zephaniah </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">It’s true what they say. We were warned: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">everything will be swept away, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">everything consumed. Winter-killed<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">perch, walleye, pike, white bellies, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">slack flags. Thousands <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">washed ashore at Stoney Lake – <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">fertilizer run-off, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">nitrogen, phosphorous, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">blue-green algae bloom.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "MS Mincho";">℟</span></b><b>. </b>It’s true. We were warned.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Everything swept away. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Everything consumed. Sky bled dry <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">of midges. Locusts, bees, neurons frayed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Antiseptic silence of canola <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">fields at dusk, muted<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">grasshopper thrum.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span><b><span style="font-family: "MS Mincho";">℟</span></b><b>. </b>Our blood poured out like dust.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;">Swept away. Consumed. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;">Empty Barn Swallow nests <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;">in rafters and eaves.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;">The Western Meadowlark’s throat, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;">an open grave. Neonic-coated <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;">soybean, canola, sunflower, wheat.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;">White Crown Sparrows, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;">migration delayed, <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 72pt; text-indent: 36pt;">anorexic, compass lost.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"> <b><span style="font-family: "MS Mincho";">℟</span></b><b>. </b>A land possessed of nettles and salt.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 108pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US">Psalm 130</span></i><i><o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> Chemical burnoff after frost, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> cocklebur, clubroot spores,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> flixweed, lamb’s-quarters,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> LibertyLink® patent fees, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> canola seed treated<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> for flea beetles, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> Longtrel™ for dandelion<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> and thistle. At night, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> the wives sit,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> shoulders hunched,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> at kitchen tables,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> divine <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> profit margins <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> with calculators and lines<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> of credit from Wells Fargo –<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> If south winds don’t blow in waves <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> of diamondback moths. If winter kills<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> the pupae of bertha armyworms. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> If sun. If rain. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> If crop insurance premium rates. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> If 25 bushels an acre to pay input costs.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US"> At night, the wives wait. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> They count their bones <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> as the moon pours out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br clear="all" style="break-before: page;" /></span><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US">NW 18 36 22 W2nd </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Gather in the summer fallowed south field.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> Winter-stiff furrows. No moon. No snow. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0cm 36pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">Overcast. Hold hands.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">Farm subsidies smashed by Intercontinental Packers,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> Big Sky Pork Farms. Our barns now their finishing<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> pens for 10 000 pigs from 1000 sows.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US">No moon. No snow. No yard-lights for miles,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> like an eye put out. Hold hands. We are<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> but breath, but chaff, what passes<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US"> and does not come again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">Sheri Benning's most recent collection of poetry, </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781800171510" target="_blank">Field Requiem</a><i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic;">(Carcanet 2021) was shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous North American and European journals. She grew up on a farm in Treaty 6 territory and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Saskatchewan.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-58049679544548073982023-01-27T12:34:00.001-05:002023-01-27T15:53:25.327-05:00FRAGMENT, PUNCTURE, TIME: GILLIAN SZE IN CONVERSATION<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Poet-scholar Gillian Sze's <i>Quiet Night Think </i>fuses prose and lyric<i> </i>into a hybrid whole that meditates on place, identity, tradition, adaptation, what to hold and how, and the language these things are filtered through. We chatted recently by email about how the book took shape and what's ahead.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJghrcDCyeFBUGnVrwDVwDhvM15x-8utuDq-RDN0PF6nZf_GYzqsguTH12KZ5teOMzNYWzPywdXuu0p3BEeFfTPlqex18hGdF2mA0DWe4NEE5QQScpFsoYcEvuQuxCw9QjkSV2JKz4yfYq71Ftkp0IKW9mJyJLMGVv2-kRUtpdlQG2VNB8LDWw_jUH0A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJghrcDCyeFBUGnVrwDVwDhvM15x-8utuDq-RDN0PF6nZf_GYzqsguTH12KZ5teOMzNYWzPywdXuu0p3BEeFfTPlqex18hGdF2mA0DWe4NEE5QQScpFsoYcEvuQuxCw9QjkSV2JKz4yfYq71Ftkp0IKW9mJyJLMGVv2-kRUtpdlQG2VNB8LDWw_jUH0A=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SUSAN GILLIS: I’m struck by your ease of movement through the book’s meditations in prose and poetry on its interwoven subjects of language and culture, family, transitions and becoming. Where did this collection begin for you, and at what point did you begin to conceive of it as hybrid whole? (aside: autotype called it a </i>coolection<i>)</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;">GILLIAN SZE: The collection (coolection!) began with the title essay, “Quiet Night Think.” I was asked to write about writing and I found myself thinking about that early encounter with poetry. Li Bai’s poem clearly made an impact. I was working on my dissertation at the time, and I found it so enjoyable to write something that wasn’t purely poetry nor purely academic. The essay just felt like an easy wandering into languages and time. <br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> When I proposed the book to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, I envisioned it as a book of essays. In the end, when I was putting the essays together, I discovered that the poems I was also writing during this time intersected well, both in tone and subject. So much of writing during early motherhood is fragmented and interrupted. It felt right that the essays would also be punctured with these slivers of poems. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">SG: There’s a passage in “The Hesitant Gaze,” on looking at art and writing from that looking, that could be about the guiding project of this book: </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“while my looking was stuck in our own linear time...in poetry, I could fold, replay, imagine and extend the lines of time and movement any which way.” </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>How does this way of writing in conversation with art inform or overlap for you with writing as a new mother?</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;">GS: So much about time didn’t make sense after becoming a parent. The baby had to sort out day from night. Until then I would just stare up into the dark with a curious wide-eyed baby while everyone else was asleep. In some ways I had a lot of time, taking a break from the demands of a “regular” life, and yet I also had so little, thrust into meeting the constant demands of someone else. I had time to think, but I also wasn’t always awake enough to remember my thoughts. An idea would sometimes return, feeling new or strange or half-understood. And all the while my children, these all-consuming, ever-changing little beings, received my attention. They, like other art objects, became (and continue to be) vital points connecting me to an unforeseeable world.</span><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SG: I love your image in “That Inverted World” of sleep as a ribbon, now punctuated. Now that you’ve returned to teaching, can we assume you’ve conquered the most disruptive influences of sleeplessness ? What’s next for you as a writer?</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;">GS: It’s taken years but my sleeping has certainly improved! I’m still writing poetry but have recently fallen in love with writing for children. Next year I have three picture books coming out, including the board book, <a href="https://www.orcabook.com/When-Sunlight-Tiptoes" style="color: #954f72;"><i>When Sunlight Tiptoes.</i></a>The poem, written in pantoum form, celebrates the new day and is accompanied by Soyeon Kim’s enchanting <a href="http://www.kimsoyeonart.com/publishedbooks#/when-sunlight-tiptoes/" style="color: #954f72;">artwork</a>.</span></div><p><i><a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2022/12/gillian-sze-poem.html" target="_blank">Read Gillian Sze's poem "Current"</a></i></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-76511566087296254542022-12-30T16:02:00.003-05:002022-12-30T16:02:51.481-05:00HELLO, 2023<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-JZ3OPuH2wQ7pLSIFRNIC5pU5Wh1cuSNdbEzKtRkTvG85JbmYTfq36uM-F0khg8ApoPOsHRKUxmDiG7SKS4r4kZHm4O2tUpRxUQOe_m_-9MG00A42C0rlpCFUKNldyTH2Rna9bhg6z5amC1ZNYQs0iUA-fKuEXM6g9-XjHI2h6ttyee3YkcPkgePxg/s2015/37063BFC-B0E8-4CFF-8168-8EB863064FE0_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2015" data-original-width="1597" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-JZ3OPuH2wQ7pLSIFRNIC5pU5Wh1cuSNdbEzKtRkTvG85JbmYTfq36uM-F0khg8ApoPOsHRKUxmDiG7SKS4r4kZHm4O2tUpRxUQOe_m_-9MG00A42C0rlpCFUKNldyTH2Rna9bhg6z5amC1ZNYQs0iUA-fKuEXM6g9-XjHI2h6ttyee3YkcPkgePxg/w508-h640/37063BFC-B0E8-4CFF-8168-8EB863064FE0_1_201_a.jpeg" width="508" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Paul Rode, </span><i>Brenda Reading </i><span style="font-size: small;">(oil on board, circa 1985)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><p></p><p>During 2021 and 2022, serving on two Canadian poetry awards committees, I was stirred in wide-ranging ways by more books and individual poems than could be encompassed by lists long or short. </p><p>I'm grateful for this wealth of poetry, which is enormous. </p><p>Some of those poems will show up here in the coming year.</p><p>To close out 2022, here's <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2022/12/gillian-sze-poem.html" target="_blank">"Current" by Gillian Sze</a>. Look for our conversation about this poem coming up in January.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6fr9FNoUNdM0VWcAH26Nx3IEOEjm9V0VFkW9EBsnQGPkpEsJ3r6Jo_-FXE1LaNlc2k21C3cqVS4UNysx-AbbQAtNFYQemJg16-P2IATMlO79fvj759jwd0QP_eOwxWVesvxZnLv0qkcOd7NfOqbXdfI1DzRE1KZI__2OwOIF2NJrd18TBd-qNPiBRyg/s4032/E1B056CB-9A4D-4B90-B7FA-79FF5D57F024.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6fr9FNoUNdM0VWcAH26Nx3IEOEjm9V0VFkW9EBsnQGPkpEsJ3r6Jo_-FXE1LaNlc2k21C3cqVS4UNysx-AbbQAtNFYQemJg16-P2IATMlO79fvj759jwd0QP_eOwxWVesvxZnLv0qkcOd7NfOqbXdfI1DzRE1KZI__2OwOIF2NJrd18TBd-qNPiBRyg/w480-h640/E1B056CB-9A4D-4B90-B7FA-79FF5D57F024.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-45184772546775409632022-12-30T15:17:00.001-05:002023-01-27T15:54:34.953-05:00GILLIAN SZE: A POEM<div style="text-align: left;">Gillian Sze</div><div style="text-align: left;">CURRENT</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>And you are ever again the wave</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>sweeping through all things.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"> --Rilke (II.3)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In a single gust, it seems, </div><div style="text-align: left;">the leaves yellow</div><div style="text-align: left;">and one evening, I find the maple bare,</div><div style="text-align: left;">the last of summer burnished.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The trees know no vanity.</div><div style="text-align: left;">I walk around a manmade lake </div><div style="text-align: left;">and tell my son</div><div style="text-align: left;">that the birch kept growing</div><div style="text-align: left;">just to meet him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Pay attention, </i>the boughs sigh.</div><div style="text-align: left;">It is against trees that I measure</div><div style="text-align: left;">the dawning of his life</div><div style="text-align: left;">as an arc of a single ring.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An ocean over, </div><div style="text-align: left;">a mulberry tree stands in the same spot</div><div style="text-align: left;">as it did twelve hundred years ago,</div><div style="text-align: left;">for the most part ignored</div><div style="text-align: left;">until everything around it was replaced</div><div style="text-align: left;">with stones and gods,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and someone ran a hand over its surface,</div><div style="text-align: left;">recognized patience, vast and slow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Somewhere, as it's done each fall,</div><div style="text-align: left;">a moose rubs its antlers among the trees,</div><div style="text-align: left;">branch against branch.</div><div style="text-align: left;">My son wonders up </div><div style="text-align: left;">at the new starkness of the maple,</div><div style="text-align: left;">the exposed scaffolding of autumn.</div><div style="text-align: left;">You lift a fallen prong of bones</div><div style="text-align: left;">and begin to work,</div><div style="text-align: left;">naming and renaming </div><div style="text-align: left;">each leafless thing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Gq5fLIBDE4uyfNWn5HzQoTPSM28LCqp7w-npl-M89zsmH9Greolkaq3qZ0upaIObwV1ZCb5RDmvLOFT5iUwoXUHkepPXgVZklj7LeuVg2-bfR1tkVxN_ifZpYllHl4JNtbn6vp3PTqOffC6dNbz3jcsfcyTsRWM8dDULUGbLvHiAEcs8yB8jYDPJPA/s990/83FBF6F5-2690-4240-9A46-14B6C4678B1C.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="862" data-original-width="990" height="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Gq5fLIBDE4uyfNWn5HzQoTPSM28LCqp7w-npl-M89zsmH9Greolkaq3qZ0upaIObwV1ZCb5RDmvLOFT5iUwoXUHkepPXgVZklj7LeuVg2-bfR1tkVxN_ifZpYllHl4JNtbn6vp3PTqOffC6dNbz3jcsfcyTsRWM8dDULUGbLvHiAEcs8yB8jYDPJPA/w640-h558/83FBF6F5-2690-4240-9A46-14B6C4678B1C.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Gillian Sze notes: "Current" is a poetic response to Shane Wilson's sculpture, </i>Gaia<i> (2009), reproduced by permission of the artist.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>"Current" is from </i>Quiet Night Think<i> (ECW, 2022). Read my <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2023/01/fragment-puncture-time-gillian-sze-in.html" target="_blank">conversation with Gillian Sze</a>.</i></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-84977289231067858562022-09-20T08:02:00.002-04:002022-10-02T16:48:15.270-04:00FIERCELY LANGUAGE RESISTS: MICHELLE GIL-MONTERO IN CONVERSATION<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8qmmTIK_SLVLNive3rg8NeefxgQ5fKqByWGMrCHIpojXX3-QH7GZzBW5H5bvdE2m6vQPJVA0ZVEbI_3Qp2gGt3vzFTSrXy2loEheXXyqz7d7ii1JknV3mMubYzbqm3tDO8b3blZv52was25JPBrtY3fwC0D3Rvo-bgd9ck7aUZXA2Z9k7eOSMjajZg/s4392/1063C8AF-C48B-4292-9E95-B3BCE629C9C7_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4392" data-original-width="3600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8qmmTIK_SLVLNive3rg8NeefxgQ5fKqByWGMrCHIpojXX3-QH7GZzBW5H5bvdE2m6vQPJVA0ZVEbI_3Qp2gGt3vzFTSrXy2loEheXXyqz7d7ii1JknV3mMubYzbqm3tDO8b3blZv52was25JPBrtY3fwC0D3Rvo-bgd9ck7aUZXA2Z9k7eOSMjajZg/w525-h640/1063C8AF-C48B-4292-9E95-B3BCE629C9C7_1_201_a.jpeg" width="525" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Michelle Gil-Montero (photo: Dawn Zacharias)</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Earlier this year I found my way to </span><a href="https://poets.org/poet/michelle-gil-montero" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Michelle Gil-Montero</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">'s brilliant translation of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="ES-AR" style="color: black;">Edinburgh Notebook </span></i><span lang="ES-AR" style="font-family: inherit;">/ <i>Cuaderno de Edimburgo</i> by Mexican poet <a href="https://www.valeriemejercaso.com/" target="_blank">Valerie Mejer Caso</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2022/04/coin-of-another-world-edinburgh.html" target="_blank">notebook is a body, a landscape</a> of grief and dying, of vanished paths. In the landscape (in the body) are mountains, shadowy ponds, quicksand, clouds compressing time, hallucinatory apparitions and transformations.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">SUSAN GILLIS: How did you decide to take on this project? </span></i><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -18pt;">Did the book find you or did you find it?</span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MICHELLE GIL-MONTERO: I had recently translated Mejer Caso’s <i>This Blue Novel</i>, another book that confronts death and loss, and I really wanted to continue with her work. As soon as I began to read <i>Edinburgh Notebook, </i>I recognized <span style="background-color: white; color: black;">a relationship between the two books that compelled me to translate <i>Edinburgh Notebook </i>next. At first glance, the books are pretty different—formally, and in scope. <i>This Blue Novel</i> is a sweeping long poem that maps generational trauma, while <i>Edinburgh Notebook</i> is a very sectioned, layer-by-layer excavation of loss and grief. </span>But both books approach autobiography in a fascinating, peculiar way: by greeting death. The poem is a strange alternate dimension where the living meet the dead. Both books invite us to know a person, the poet, by befriending the things and people she has lost—as in a line from <i>This Blue Novel</i>:<em><span style="background-color: white; color: black;"></span></em><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">“I will introduce you to my dead, one by one.” <span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SG: Willis Barnstone has written that translation is, among other things, “the art of revelation.” Do you agree? What are some other ways you would describe the art of translation?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span>MGM: I love how swiftly this definition flies in the face of the persistently limited thinking of translation as treasonous, compromising—in other words, as a failed, foggy copy of an original work. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Yes, I agree that translation is revelatory—and even doubly revelatory, because it illuminates the translator’s reading/writing in addition to the author’s (and I think that the two coexist in weird translation space-time). I’d only add that, in my own practice, I don’t always presume to reveal—I really try to honor a sense of what is unknown and unknowable to me in a text. I love to translate, maybe most of all, because it reminds me of how fiercely language resists becoming fully knowable or settled in meaning. Every translation is touched by uncertainty. I admire translators who find ways to harness some of that uncertainty, make a bit of that mystery palpable—translations that, in making “the unknown known” (as Barnstone also says), find ways to reveal some of the unknown-ness too. </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SG: These poems feel wildly revelatory, and sometimes incendiary, even when their materiality is weighty or watery. What are some things you grappled with in bringing these qualities over to the English-language poems?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">MGM: I was very interested in the tension between the book’s subject matter and its wild whirling-up of images, echoes. Matter, for all its weight, gets sucked into a kind of “high vacuum,” to use one of Mejer Caso’s metaphors. She writes that, “Edinburgh,” the site of her brother’s suicide, “does not exist, except in a high vacuum.” It (the poem? life?) tosses us around, as swiftly as things are created and destroyed, there is a stillness at its center (death?). One example that comes to mind is “Third,” which was one of my favorite poems to translate, because it feels like an ecstatic vision or violent prayer. It’s phantasmagoric, sonically rich, emotionally charged, but when I step away from it, I’m not even sure what it’s “about”; ultimately, its apparitions shape an eerie sense of absence. In Mejer Caso’s work, I’m often amazed by the combined speed and precision of things flying into view, but there is this deep stillness as well. In my translation, I tried to remain aware of that stillness. I spent a lot of time fine-tuning the sounds, especially the rhythms, because it was important to capture the momentum of her lines, and that feeling of things suddenly stopping short, and also, to create an echo-chamber of assonances and consonances. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SG: The poems occur across vastly different landscapes, some recognizable, others fantastical, fabulous. How might some of these landscapes be read differently by Spanish-speaking and English-speaking readers? (Is this even a fair question?) How did you approach differences in the familiar and the strange, in landscape or imagery, across linguistic and cultural divides?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">MGM: Your question has me looking back to some of the landscapes in the book and wondering—for the first time, I admit—about this! How these landscapes present as “familiar” or “strange,” culturally—but also, as you point out, how many of these spaces appear otherworldly. There are just so many landscapes in the book—it’s not, as we might incorrectly assume from the title, a book “situated” in Edinburgh. On the contrary, the title names that city, I think, as a place that (for the poet) “does not exist”: she was never there. That city came to her from afar, via a horrible phone call about her brother and suicide note. Describing that city—the place where her brother lived, a child playing outside across the street, etc.)—she invents it, contours its absence, as an exercise in grief. I think many of the landscapes in the book are similarly speculative. They take shape through imagined scenarios—often, when picturing a distant friend or loved one across impassible stretches of time or space. Encountering the landscapes in the book, to me, usually feels like jumping into a photograph or painting, which becomes suddenly animated by an urgent need to search for someone, something—not like travelling to an actual place in the world. Which is not to say that culture is not present or relevant—only to say that feelings of dislocation are very prominent, and endemic in the Spanish, and probably shared—in different ways, no doubt—by readers in different cultural contexts. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">SG: There’s perhaps no closer reading than in the practice of translation. Working so closely with poetry of such passionate intensity as this: what challenges and what gifts did you find?</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MGM: In this book, maybe more than in any other book I have translated, I was left with the sense of having navigated deeply through someone else’s life—her memories, dreams, and trauma. It’s a profoundly autobiographical book, and as I worked on it, Valerie shared a lot with me about the experiences in her life that informed it. This knowledge was a unique gift, and challenge. My task wasn’t just to translate the language—I also felt a sense of responsibility to the intimate world “behind” the book, and really, to the poet herself. This deeper sense of responsibility really stretched me. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2022/03/valerie-mejer-caso-echo-eco.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Read "Echo | Eco" here</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://actionbooks.org/valerie-mejer-caso-edinburgh-notebook/" target="_blank">Find <i>Edinburgh Notebook</i> here</a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXflE2TfL3eoCNX0LzS0QvgbIW6Ux_9_l69B7NuG2bbldBMpCbB-J5ZTDGFrQHKE-18H1gXb4N9VY9XTPLTzWc-u2fE-gyZsWxqyAUFOJlJvfD0QMUjb-0NtdwGLhMP1dOytGvQsYY3QUw-zOgha4VfL5o4n1XVCIzGzI0IJlUdAXsHPlFIYhMURpFxQ/s600/F8332861-7727-4848-A333-1DB0F62B222E.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXflE2TfL3eoCNX0LzS0QvgbIW6Ux_9_l69B7NuG2bbldBMpCbB-J5ZTDGFrQHKE-18H1gXb4N9VY9XTPLTzWc-u2fE-gyZsWxqyAUFOJlJvfD0QMUjb-0NtdwGLhMP1dOytGvQsYY3QUw-zOgha4VfL5o4n1XVCIzGzI0IJlUdAXsHPlFIYhMURpFxQ/w480-h640/F8332861-7727-4848-A333-1DB0F62B222E.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></p><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-31636350011116810562022-08-15T14:28:00.000-04:002022-08-15T14:28:06.157-04:00Claire Caldwell: A Poem<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZ1dQKAXqVQvCNjTYPdVN3xOEL5ZAkVMTgKa-S3N-nfn8A7KJcbzrql3H57KQVYmt3Dlrw2I0Gs6n5RBen-avBvhxQO9tVAGF2-G3lHnAmWgD6LvuXoSgXTo9njd4X7XrvzIZsnIBpJzu9whQo-4XEUz6Pfp47aRToJrRtYXqWf4fi8aX-FA7r4w9Xg/s1536/23B2A67C-1970-4579-999A-29BCEF1D60F4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1043" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWZ1dQKAXqVQvCNjTYPdVN3xOEL5ZAkVMTgKa-S3N-nfn8A7KJcbzrql3H57KQVYmt3Dlrw2I0Gs6n5RBen-avBvhxQO9tVAGF2-G3lHnAmWgD6LvuXoSgXTo9njd4X7XrvzIZsnIBpJzu9whQo-4XEUz6Pfp47aRToJrRtYXqWf4fi8aX-FA7r4w9Xg/w434-h640/23B2A67C-1970-4579-999A-29BCEF1D60F4.png" width="434" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Claire Caldwell</div><p style="text-align: left;">SOUNDS A RIVER MAKES</p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">Gas leak, ventilator, bear clicking its teeth.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Twelve hundred caribou hooves on frost.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Lips around bottle, bottle slurring</p><p style="text-align: left;">on bar. Rattling aspen, dusky grouse,<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">sheets drying outside. Grandmothers</p><p style="text-align: left;">stuffing envelopes in a high school gym.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Sex in a sleeping bag, house on fire.</p><p style="text-align: left;">A children's choir after one kid</p><p style="text-align: left;">faints, before the rest start to sing.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>from</i> <a href="https://invisiblepublishing.com/product/gold-rush/" target="_blank">Gold Rush </a><i><a href="https://invisiblepublishing.com/product/gold-rush/" target="_blank">by Claire Caldwell</a>, Invisible Publishing, 2020</i></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-47449874761483501562022-06-14T09:00:00.034-04:002022-06-14T09:00:00.148-04:00WHAT SHIFTS: A CONVERSATION WITH BREN SIMMERS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlvV_GUThxAtVzMQm0fNKquXAAZcai3Wid7BqZTZGMJekZqO6i8gVNh4eATXMLUfW8eJt-Ynb9hThIA5h0N9ro13s6smSP_Rza1difpJxObrgnikrkRnCy6JjxHm7rKxYlI5Q8MgDMea1g18YPnUnDMXqcyRLafO_Hf9kLtIiBUvqAQIhfbcYffz1qFg/s4000/D93C1D81-4105-4D4C-B4DD-69C418FF28F0.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlvV_GUThxAtVzMQm0fNKquXAAZcai3Wid7BqZTZGMJekZqO6i8gVNh4eATXMLUfW8eJt-Ynb9hThIA5h0N9ro13s6smSP_Rza1difpJxObrgnikrkRnCy6JjxHm7rKxYlI5Q8MgDMea1g18YPnUnDMXqcyRLafO_Hf9kLtIiBUvqAQIhfbcYffz1qFg/w480-h640/D93C1D81-4105-4D4C-B4DD-69C418FF28F0.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>SUSAN GILLIS: How did you first come to poetry - or poetry to you?</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">BREN SIMMERS: I grew up in a household of readers. We went to the library once a week and loaded up on books. My dad, d.n. </span><span>simmers,</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> was a poet and he encouraged me to write. For two hours every weekend, he would shut the door to his office and we knew better than to disturb him. From an early age, I knew that writing meant quiet, reading and muttering to yourself – all things I loved to do. Later, when I moved out, my dad had a book box by the door, his recently read pile. I could take anything I want. Having that kind of unfettered access to books and family support to pursue writing was key to my finding poetry.</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>SG: One thing I admire in </i>If, When<i> is the way you’ve made time and place almost porous; lives lived a century ago seem as present as those being lived now. In exploring those earlier times and places, what surprised you, what changed you (or, changed for you, in your sense of place and connectedness)?</i></span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">BS: I like that word, porous. Living in Squamish, surrounded by glaciers and igneous rock older than human history, I started to think about time differently. My life is one brief layer of strata layered on top of the generations who came before. Their decisions affect me, just as my decisions will affect those that come after. While researching my great-grandparent’s history at Britannia Mines, I noticed that for the last century people in this community have asked similar questions: How to make a living? How to protect the places and people we love? I wanted to ask another question: Can we do both?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>SG: Another effect of this porosity is that individual experience, wherever and whenever it’s located, feels part of a greater whole. What about the threats to this whole</i></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>? The poem “Spring Conditions at Best” leans this way in its wish for a reprieve from environmental anxiety. What other threats or tensions do you navigate in the poems?</i> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">BS: Living in an intact ecosystem, you see how all the parts contribute to the whole. For example, the fall rains raise the river levels for spawners to return. Bears drag these carcasses into the woods and fertilize the trees and overwintering eagles teach their young to scavenge the fish. The forests and minerals in Howe Sound have long fed families too. Now, tourism is also a big employer. As housing prices rise and more people move to the area, the natural ecosystem is being heavily impacted. The construction of new subdivisions bisects wildlife corridors. The cultural landscape is shifting too. One aspect that I explore in the book is this tension between insider and outsider, the old Squamish and the “new.”</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The poem “Spring Conditions at Best” began as a lament about larger ecological issues but in the revision process, I ended up losing that element. The idea that emerged was that we can’t always live in a state of eco-anxiety and extinction grief. I wanted to shift the focus away from what is disappearing and toward what is still here. Instead of mourning, how do we appreciate and protect?</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>SG: What’s on your immediate horizon, what are you reading/writing/ thinking about these days?</i></span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">BS: I’ve been thinking a lot about uncertainty and grief. I lost my dad a couple of years ago, and my mother lives in a long-term care home in order to receive the attention that her Alzheimer’s requires. My writing tends to be informed by lived experience, so it makes sense my work would explore these ideas. But learning how to write about these topics without retriggering emotional wounds has been tricky. I’ve had to adapt my writing process to work in shorter stints and take lots of breaks. Right now, I have a draft of the new poetry manuscript taped to my wall, but I’m letting it percolate a bit longer to gain a more distanced perspective. That way I can try to approach it as a reader would, to see what needs shifting, and to open it up from a personal narrative to one that speaks to others' experiences. </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">During this time, my reading pile has naturally gravitated to the topics of grief, illness, anxiety, and uncertainty. Recent favourites include <i>Obit</i> by Victoria Chang, <i>Music for the Dead and Resurrected</i> by Valzhyna Mort, <i>Hesitating Once to Feel Glory</i> by Maleea Acker, <i>These Precious Days</i> by Anne Patchett, and <i>A Funny Kind of Paradise</i> by Jo Owens.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Bren Simmers's most recent book is </i><a href="http://www.gaspereau.com/bookInfo.php?AID=0&AISBN=9781554472277" target="_blank">If, When</a><i>. She lives in PEI. Read her poem <a href="https://www.concreteandriver.ca/2022/06/bren-simmers-poem.html" target="_blank">"Spring Conditions at Best"</a>.</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><p></p>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-83451577355859275692022-06-08T13:30:00.000-04:002022-06-08T13:30:18.854-04:00BREN SIMMERS: A POEM<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrYdbJ-57IEdXCfCyVuwr2lGUmt61JVaQx1pY355RH6YNYWYAHhz0Trlm9RQLHoVtYGwCaJVBlCIiYahEcRhFx-7GzOmozQQh6o5jlxb6jv0aVxrFchTsQJwDvFFedpusV1ibD7Sc3Il-AsXKhesBDmkFWYnQT5j0iG78XPdZ6JBAkmdqx0Tige-maA/s1280/CA313382-F094-4B6F-A92D-2AC89D88805D.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Author Bren Simmers kayaking" border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIrYdbJ-57IEdXCfCyVuwr2lGUmt61JVaQx1pY355RH6YNYWYAHhz0Trlm9RQLHoVtYGwCaJVBlCIiYahEcRhFx-7GzOmozQQh6o5jlxb6jv0aVxrFchTsQJwDvFFedpusV1ibD7Sc3Il-AsXKhesBDmkFWYnQT5j0iG78XPdZ6JBAkmdqx0Tige-maA/w640-h480/CA313382-F094-4B6F-A92D-2AC89D88805D.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">Bren Simmers</div><div style="text-align: left;">SPRING CONDITIONS AT BEST</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We're tired of headlines, of doomsday</div><div style="text-align: left;">pessimism, of ponying up for a season</div><div style="text-align: left;">pass at Whistler only to get spring</div><div style="text-align: left;">conditions at best.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We want fresh pow and bluebird skies.</div><div style="text-align: left;">We want can, not can't.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Don't tell me what we've lost, show me</div><div style="text-align: left;">what we've still got left.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>from</i> If, When <a href="http://www.gaspereau.com/bookInfo.php?AID=0&AISBN=9781554472277" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">(Gaspereau Press, 2021)</a><i>. By permission of the author</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Bren Simmers is the author of <i>If, When</i> (2021), </span><em>Pivot Point </em><span style="background-color: white;">(2019), </span><em>Night Gears</em><span style="background-color: white;"> (2010), and </span><em>Hastings-Sunrise (</em><span style="background-color: white;">2015), which was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. Her work has won the Arc Poem of the Year Award. She lives on Prince Edward Island.</span></span></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2523711532970987581.post-32469240401913647122022-04-20T10:30:00.007-04:002022-04-20T10:30:00.159-04:00Kevin Irie: The Tantramar Re-Vision<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08xBZY83kIGNWJuTDmbECa3tdRyxm1YmeqhHhIWbexKWfSEX0KnyhHLkWfCZ7e-OFdfx5EuJB5HoIYZTvqZKpsbxqzJjViE7av3QyYaTL-8MJDiB-uqBwXePc_5S5DQJ1SKPAOaorZcqdecbc7vTDTdHC210R9rNyXaAWs6ciHIEdp-b3UXhKr8F3CA/s900/D63454EE-D148-4A83-ACC5-DC6DBF240E99.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="675" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08xBZY83kIGNWJuTDmbECa3tdRyxm1YmeqhHhIWbexKWfSEX0KnyhHLkWfCZ7e-OFdfx5EuJB5HoIYZTvqZKpsbxqzJjViE7av3QyYaTL-8MJDiB-uqBwXePc_5S5DQJ1SKPAOaorZcqdecbc7vTDTdHC210R9rNyXaAWs6ciHIEdp-b3UXhKr8F3CA/w300-h400/D63454EE-D148-4A83-ACC5-DC6DBF240E99.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">John James Audubon, Whooping Crane (Sandhill Crane), 1835. Image from Museum of Nebraska Art</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </div><div><i> In</i></div><div><i> the marsh grass,</i></div><div><i> </i></div><div><i> wind</i></div><div><i> stirs up some business</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i> I don't know about.</i><i style="text-align: right;"> </i></div><p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/wow-what-is-that-huge-bird-sandhill-cranes-are-making-nb-home-1.6422581" target="_blank">This exciting news about sandhill cranes</a> taking up residence in the salt marshes between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick sends me back today to Kevin Irie's luminous book of poems, <i>The Tantramar Re-vision</i> (McGill-Queen's, 2021).</p><p>In these poems, instances of the extraordinary sometimes leap, sometimes slide into a landscape of shifting moods. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> <i>Something moves downstream</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> past thinking of us:</i></div><p style="text-align: left;">Encounters are as likely to be with conundrums and meditative correspondences as with things.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><i> How did it end as</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> a small dark brush</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> sweeping the earth</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> up into a stillness</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> like an answer</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> giving silence a turn?</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> ...</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> The quiet that covers</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> a crow's severed wing</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> like a tarp laid over a bier.</i></div><p style="text-align: left;">Language is precise and expansive, as though it is itself watching and walking through the marshes. John Thompson's <i>Stilt Jack </i>runs beneath the poems as an aquifer of poetic energy. </p><div style="text-align: left;"> <i> Haven't I moved though life</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> like heat through dry grass,</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> unseen but everywhere</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Basho visits, </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <i>Even Basho couldn't escape from fleas and lice</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> when he lay down in the dark.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> Centuries later, they're still on the page.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> A flow of ink kept them alive.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">and weather,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <i> The compulsion of snow</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> to keep on rising.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> To descend as</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> tiny ripped parachutes</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">and ecologies of the self in the world:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <i>Twigs crack like ice breaking</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> beneath your boots when you've stepped</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> too far away from yourself</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Like the cranes in the Tantramar Marshes, Kevin Irie's poems give me the sense I'm encountering a mysterious elsewhere, a mystery entirely at home.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk60YryOAl_Z_a21gzU3w3adODtQW7Hrs2l3-EvbWBSZNFUvhjl3Mi3xbm63kMB-5C53c5kav_jmVwLwt-WJ7lBMt5hflO1G0OCIO8G--vtLTaVbOkYGzUmU67vKkAai3vD0a2mQ4vCChQWapjQz1qL6IxHINS3-P5bpqMWniCpJVl0ISWn2Wm3CUWWw/s600/%20Irie%20Tantramar.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk60YryOAl_Z_a21gzU3w3adODtQW7Hrs2l3-EvbWBSZNFUvhjl3Mi3xbm63kMB-5C53c5kav_jmVwLwt-WJ7lBMt5hflO1G0OCIO8G--vtLTaVbOkYGzUmU67vKkAai3vD0a2mQ4vCChQWapjQz1qL6IxHINS3-P5bpqMWniCpJVl0ISWn2Wm3CUWWw/w266-h400/%20Irie%20Tantramar.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(<i>Excerpts<span style="text-align: right;"> </span></i><span style="text-align: right;"><i>from</i> "Windblown", "A Creek as Complicity, Duplicity, Daring", "Defeated [A Confession]", "Studies in Contrast", "The Compulsion of Snow", and "October's Meadow", <i>from </i><a href="https://www.mqup.ca/tantramar-re-vision--the-products-9780228006374.php?page_id=120705&#!prettyPhoto" target="_blank">The Tantramar Re-Vision,</a> <i>McGill-Queens Press, 2021)</i></span></div>Susan Gillishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01012796668780201731noreply@blogger.com0