The Day is a Cold Grey Stone

By SPG

“The Day is a Cold Grey Stone”

“The Day is a Cold Grey Stone”
Written by Allan Safarik
Published by Hagios Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-04-4

Prolific and critically-acclaimed poet Allan Safarik has reached the point in his career where a “New and Selected” anthology of his work is well-warranted. Safarik’s made Dundurn, SK his home for many years, but he hails from – and is inexorably bound to – the West Coast, and it’s that watery landscape which receives his literary attention in “The Day is a Cold Grey Stone,” (Hagios Press).

Safarik’s introduction explains his steadfast connection with Vancouver; the ocean and its myriad creatures; birds (as a boy the poet sold squabs in Chinatown); and the colourful characters (family included) he’s encountered along the way.

The metaphoric and somewhat serious-sounding title is not representative of the work en total, which is often playful and entertaining, ie: a herring gull’s “like a starved\chicken with a complex.” There are numerous reminiscences from the writer’s childhood – running after the ice man’s truck; jumping off a garage roof; inhaling the sweet, blue smoke from his Czech grandfather’s Cuban cigars – and anecdotes about folks, including the toothless and wine-stained man in “Fish Candy”: “[He] digs his penknife\into the [cod] heads dislodging eyeballs\tosses them into the air\catches each one in his mouth\with a loud sucking sound”. As the story goes, a gull swoops to catch one of the tossed eyeballs and pecks the man, “leaving a brighter red spot than\on the forehead of an East Indian wife.”

In the lyrical title poem, the poet watches a “crazy woman,” “hacking\at the flowers with a stick,” and he’s witnessed her “quarrel for an hour\with a solitary tree.” In this poem, as with many in this collection, we see how Safarik walks the line between narrative and the lyricism he’s best known for. The latter is especially observed in the poem’s ending: “the void is a fearless wind\in a throat soft as water\O how the moon must hold her by its light.”

The poet often presents a twist with his final lines, as evidenced in “The Veranda,” which focuses on the old Czech men Safarik’s grandfather played cards with, and ends with what almost feels like an afterthought, but is indeed the line that resonates: “Chestnut trees were blooming on the boulevard.”

Personification’s a poetic device Safarik’s clearly at home with it. “A black car stares,” “Blood crawls over the floor,” and “The Sun gawks overhead like a voyeur\through the canopy of blushing trees\crushed plants applaud.”

Like a painter or photographer, this poet also utilizes light to full advantage. He describes a jellyfish as “A birth of light\Mouth of milk”. Delightful! In “Sea Wind,” a poem so rich with description it’s a textual landscape, he describes “Flashes of landlocked fish\Spine-silver needles in the sun”.

“As long as I can remember my family has had a working relationship with the ocean,” Safarik writes. Clearly the West Coast got its hooks into this poet, and his fans will appreciate the veritable net of arresting poems – 25 new and a school of selected – that he presents in “The Day is a Cold Grey Stone.”

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Hagios Press, Uncategorized on 13 August 2010 – 11:54 pm | Comments (0)
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Endgames

By SPG

Endgames

“Endgames”
Written by Andrew Stubbs
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-72-0

I don’t know the writer and University of Regina professor, Andrew Stubbs, but I’m certain he’d make a great dinner guest. I make this claim after devouring “Endgames,” his new book of poetry with Thistledown Press. It’s the breadth of interests and knowledge that wow: Stubbs writes intelligently about theology, psychoanalysis, history, and, most importantly to this reader: love in the here and now.
Character-based titles reveal his range: from heloise\ abelard” (tragic lovers) to “the count of monte cristo” and “bond james bond”. One part of the book is dedicated to a poetic portrait of Daniel Paul Schreber (d. 1911), a judge, “failed candidate for the Reichstag,” and artist who suffered from paranoid fantasies that attracted the attention of Freud. The author includes an illuminating introduction to this section.
Many of the pieces are written in a minimalistic, “snapshot” style. To illustrate, here’s the poem “foreign affairs” in its entirety:

foreign affairs

it was a town. it had a beach,
vacancies. chat over
brandy, bartok. morning:
tim’s on the run lunch in the car.
somewhere up north.

Look at the references here: from “bartok” to “tim’s,” (which this Canadian reader interprets as Tim Horton’s). There’s not a single excess word, and though we don’t know the nature of the “foreign affairs” alluded to in the title, the poet provides just enough for one to imagine a frenetic time and place. These few lines also open a window into character. (Here’s a challenge: if you had only five lines to preserve a place and time, how would you manage it?)
Like any book of poetry worth its weight, “Endgames” is saturated with arresting images and lines one does not easily forget, like “I\miss the war\in your eyes” and “slowly I’m learning not to call anything my own.”
My favourite poem in the collection, “winter street” begins with a quote from Charles Bukowski and offers a fresh take on heartache. Stubbs writes:

lost love,
spice added to
the jambalaya of nightfall, you
pin to the air
like a wreath.

Read this poem slowly: these are genius linebreaks, and “winter street” is a sparkling metaphor for grief. In another meditation on heartbreak – “mainz, germany, april 1981” – Stubbs hits paydirt again:

after the years
those first versions
of us dead. still, I admit to hope
they’re somewhere, friends. We’ll meet them, later
in the forest.

Passages like the above are so well-wrought I post them where I can see them – on my fridge – to enjoy every day. (Jambalaya, indeed.)
Stubbs is well-known as an editor and a scholar on the work of Estevan-born poet Eli Mandel. As with Mandel, form and ingenuity are central to the poet’s writing. His first poetry book, “White Light Primitive,” was released in 2009. A thinker with a beating heart: most welcome.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Thistledown Press on 5 August 2010 – 9:22 pm | Comments (0)
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Draco’s Child

By SPG

Draco’s Child

Draco’s Child by Sharon Plumb
ISBM 9781897235706
Thistledown Press
$14.95
Review by Sharon Adam

This is a story of space pioneers who have been settled on an alien planet. They have encountered many hardships, including the loss of several of their members and the companion ship that was part of the settlement plan. Through trial and error, the members of the settlers try to adapt to the harsh realities of their new environment. Life is difficult and the settlers are not well. Then they are visited by the “star child”.
Varia and her father are distrustful of the star child and refuse to drink his star water, even though all the other settlers drink and seem to recover from the various symptoms that have plagued them since their arrival. As the settlers improve, they begin to change physically and seem to be adapting to the planet that they now inhabit. Varia remains suspicious of the star child and deliberately tries to thwart the plans that the rest of the community has so trustingly embraced. She wanders into a cave where she discovers a wondrous stone that turns out to be an egg. Her decision to hatch the egg, instead of giving it to the star child has a monumental effect on her and the settlers.
The egg does hatch and Varia becomes the protector of a beautiful dragon. Of course she loves her dragon/child and because she trusts the creature instead of the star child, she is faced with choices that affect not only her and the dragon, but the entire colony of settlers. The changes that are happening are not only physical, but psychological. Varia must face her fears and choose between loyalty to her new “family” and the community she has left.
This novel is about loyalty, self discovery, change and acceptance. Written with a young adult audience in mind, adults will also enjoy the themes explored in this story.

This book is available at your local bookstore or visit www.skbooks.com.

Posted in Thistledown Press on 26 July 2010 – 7:59 pm | Comments (0)
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Fallout

By SPG

Fallout

“Fallout”
Written by Sandra Ridley
Published by Hagios Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-05-1

Before I read “Fallout,” the new book of poetry by former Saskatchewanian Sandra Ridley, I had never heard of “Downwinders,” “trinitite,” or “the Tumbler-Snapper Test Series.” “Atomic Cowboys?” The term sounds like an apt name for a country punk band, but in the Notes section of the Ottawa poet’s book we learn that these cowboys were hired by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to “herd cattle over Ground Zero just after detonations – for the purpose of studying the effects of radiation on animal tissue.”

Indeed, all is not what it seems in this distinctive book, released in 2010 by Hagios Books. The back cover copy reveals that the collection “appears to be about the legacy of the nuclear age,” and many of the poems do deal with the “Fallout” the title suggests: illnesses spawned by “Radioactive particles blowing past the Dakotas” and the “blind rabbits, broken Joshua trees” at the Trinity Test Site, for example, but these poems are interspersed between pieces about childhood, rural life, and a broken family, and the book closes with a long poem in ghazal form – “Life: Ghazals for C.,” – about the poet’s sister who died at age two.

The latter text especially showcases Ridley’s strong voice; it was previously published as a Jackpine Press chapbook and earned a bpNichol Chapbook Award (Ridley was co-winner), plus it garnered the poet a finalist position for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Impressive.

Perhaps most striking is the writer’s effective use of irony, beginning with the opening poem, “Funeral”: “First time the Officer rides in high style is four days after he dies.\His hearse is polished spotless, screw-you dignified.” Sometimes irony is achieved through clever line-breaks, as we read in the ghazal sequence, “Lift”: “We ask the Fates to respond & they do\with nothing but dread for our questions”.

Novelty and danger are sisters in this book, as they sometimes are in the flesh and blood world. After bomb detonations, “the wind shifts west, shimmers rain.\Children run outside, spin and catch water drops,\small mouths open.”
Much of the book concerns serious matters, but injections of humour balance the tone. In “No Water,” for example, we read that “Luxury was having a summer outhouse\with not one seat but two.”

Saskatchewan readers will appreciate the numerous nods toward prairie realities. Ridley writes that at the Foam Lake elevator, “there’s always a shaft of dusty light\and specks of mouse shit swept into the cracks of old floorboards.” The images are frequently blanched with sadness, as in “Farm Sale,” where a barn is “asunder with drifts” and “cattle are half-starved,” and despair is palpable in rhythmic lines like “she cries by her hand pump in the kitchen\for the morning’s dead gopher in the well.” Suggestion is the key here (and always).

Finally, a note on the book’s design: it’s lovely. Wider than long, and compact in overall size, “Fallout” is a book made more for the hands than most. May it fall into yours.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Hagios Press on 19 July 2010 – 7:42 pm | Comments (0)
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Fishtailing

By SPG

Fishtailing

“Fishtailing”
Written by Wendy Phillips
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$14.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-411-8

“Fishtailing,” the new genre-hybridized book for teens by Richmond, BC writer Wendy Phillips, is 196 pages long but takes precious little time to read. A drama that reads like a novel written in poems, the book’s über-quick pacing, innovative structure, disparate adolescent characters and bold themes combine to create a literary experience highly-suited for teenagers.
The story braids the inner hopes, fears and traumas of four central characters: edgy Natalie, who’s been transferred to her new school due to “some difficulty with peer relationships” at her former school; Tricia, who feels invisible within a blended family, struggles with her Japanese\Canadian ethnicity, and is drawn toward friendship with Natalie; Miguel, who’s fled the violence of Central America with his uncle and cousin, reads Neruda, and is haunted by images of his mother’s murder; and Kyle – the most interesting of the four seniors – who works in his father’s garage, writes the best poetry, and plays his guitar with grease-stained fingers.
We also hear from Mrs. Farr, an overwhelmed English teacher who encourages the students to write poetry but challenges them over the merest hint of sex or violence in their work. (In other words, she dissuades the teens to address the issues most relevant to them). For example, when Miguel realistically writes of his village’s massacre, Farr responds “you dwell on blood and carnage excessively. Perhaps an uplifting moment of redemption is in order”. When Kyle, a motorcyclist, writes “I gun my engine till it roars\The pistons explode between my legs” – okay, that’s more than a hint – he is chastised for “overt sexual references.” Farr frequently e-mails the school counsellor, Janice Nishi, for advice.
The narrative’s revealed in e-mail like entries, poems (we know some are given as assignments); and in Farr’s comments on the assignments.
Natalie and Miguel have truly disturbing histories. Regarding the former, Phillips divulges just enough to explain Natalie’s compulsion for slashing herself. The girl “Starts a work of art\in blood\on [her] thigh,” and also teaches Tricia how to cut and arrive at the “river of forgetting”.
There are several “sweet” moments as the young couples become involved. Kyle, especially, is besotted by Tricia (“She’s welded on the inside\of my eyelids”), and even Natalie manages a pithy love note: “I’ll say this.\His hands know\how to heat up\my blood”. Readers witness how Kyle develops as a poet, and whether it’s straight ahead metaphors (“A poem is a bucket\of bolts”) or the self-aware line “My voice\is changing,” one can’t help cheering for this blue-collared character.
Tension abounds, and the plot snowballs toward an explosive ending.
Phillips, a first-time author, has worked as a journalist, high school English teacher, and a teacher-librarian, and she’s lived on either side of Canada and across the world (Southern Africa, Australia). She brings much knowledge and experience to this absorbing text, thus whether she’s writing in the voice of renegade Natalie or Mrs. Farr, Phillips gets it right.
“Fishtailing” was published by Coteau Books. A sequel may well be in order.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Coteau Books on 13 July 2010 – 5:58 pm | Comments (0)
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Gaits

By SPG

Gaits

“Gaits”
Written by Paulette Dubé
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-74-4

I’m positively wild about Paulette Dubé’s new book. Walking through the numbered poems in “Gaits” was a meditative experience; they ferried me into the understory – with its seeds, scat, berries, pine needles, creatures, bird song, and autumn leaves (which “follow as brown tap shoes”) – and readers, there’s no place I’d rather be.

There’s ample white space around the stanzas in the award-winning Jasper poet’s fifth collection, which fittingly allows both the pieces and their readers room to breathe. As the title suggests, the poems examine “gaits” – both animal and human – through the seasons. It’s an inspired idea, and one which required a hawk eye and owl ear-to-the-ground (and air).

Although brief and deceptively simple, the finely-honed pieces are actually multi-layered: the masterly poet weaves descriptions of the natural world, mythology, contemporary life, and philosophy into a spider-fine lace of words. Look, for example, at how the following lines pull double duty: “a day of soft rain\melts a hard week of snow”. I highly agree with the poet’s assertion that “healing is\water over stones, wind over grass, sounds\of deer, fearless.”

Like any perceptive hiker, the poet knows that “in the forest\what you see\depends on when”. Patience is required and rewarded. In Dubé’s original line of vision, “mountain water scythes the earth” and “brown bats flit\reckless as sparrows, filling the air with Japanese\glass chimes”. She “watch[es] the elk watching the snow” and wonders “are we like this, smoky\haze, snow moving between trees?” This is exceptional writing, and I hope the powers-that-be (aka awards’ juries) are paying attention.

Animals are revered throughout this collection; they “know” and “see” perhaps more than humans can ever hope to. A hummingbird “hears colour,” and “Coyote blows his nose on assumptions”.

Dubé’s finesse with line-breaks frequently demonstrates her technical talent. She writes: “Hummingbird fusses spider web just so\dandelion fluff and that red thread will do\a nest, is of course practical”.

I feel badly for those who don’t have – or take – the time to explore the natural world. Like the poems in this book, the wilds are a balm. They are also a teaching place. With the poet we may wonder “can I learn?\can I be quiet?\ can I walk and observe?\ noiseless”. Ah, but we can try.

All my friends are here: the loon, pileated woodpeckers, coyotes, hummingbirds, snakes, grouse, elk, and trees. I don’t know Dubé, but I’m pretty sure that if I did, we’d become fast friends, too. Anyone who gets down on hands and knees to smell calypso orchids; examine the “sharp” and “soft” sides of a grass blade; and sees aspen in “their chic white suits, black seams gleam[ing]” is someone I want to know, and read.

Yes, I’m wild about this book. Thank you, Thistledown Press, for ushering it into the light. What Dubé’s delivered is a textual installation, of sorts: her gallery is nature in all its raw-boned beauty. It’s a fascinating world out there, and folks, the air – like these poems – is mountain fresh.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Thistledown Press on 7 July 2010 – 8:48 pm | Comments (1)
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Prairie Feast: A Writer’s Journey Home For Dinner

By SPG

Prairie Feast: A Writer’s Journey Home For Dinner

“Prairie Feast: a writer’s journey home for dinner”
Written by Amy Jo Ehman
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-413-2

Amy Jo Ehman’s book is scrumptious. Part memoir, part “How To” (eat locally), part stand-up comedy, and part recipe book with glossy photos, “Prairie Feast: a writer’s journey home for dinner” is a literary, culinary, and, dare I say a cultural tour de force. From berry picking to fowl (or “fall”) suppers (“Choosing which [one] to attend is like choosing between movies when all the blockbusters are out”); from zucchini overload to the vagaries of small-town food festivals, this revelatory book is the very personification of Saskatchewan.

Ehman grew up on a farm near Craik and her rural upbringing remains central to her heart. It also fuels her appetite for fresh prairie … well, everything. In 2005, Ehman and her husband embarked on a year of eating locally­­­ – almost everything they ate, from spices to mushrooms to the flour she baked with – had to be produced in Saskatchewan. Readers are privy not only to how the pair managed, but why it’s important to support local producers and grow one’s own food, and just how much fun the challenge can be. The year was “not meant to be an exercise in frugality and hardship – not a sacrifice, but a celebration of local food.”

This book’s a winner on myriad levels. The always-entertaining anecdotes ring numerous (dinner) bells; the book’s exceedingly well-researched (experts include scientists and “Grandma”); and the writing’s peppered with wit and mouth-watering flair. Regarding farm eggs: “Big and small, white and brown, [they line up] together in the carton like a mini-United Nations.” Ehman effortlessly shifts between personal reflection and hardcore facts, and each chapter ends with recipes which demonstrate her eclectic palate, ie: “Berry Muesli Martini,” “Summer Rain Soup,” (“It is important to pick the vegetables in the rain. Somehow, the soup just tastes better”); and, more exotically, “Kibbe Nayya”.

There’s a feast of trivia here, ie: not long ago “Britain banned saskatoon berries until rigorous laboratory testing could prove they were safe to eat. After all, millions of Canadians might be wrong.” And who knew one can transform an “ordinary oven into an artisanal hearth by spraying the hot inside with cold water”?

Ehman credits many friends for their know-how, like Tracy Muzzolini, whose “European breads were like exotic birds on the shelf.” There’s romance in the form of humorous exchanges between husband and wife. There’s pride in both Ehman’s rural past and in her portrayal of Saskatoon, where an “ideal date” is a trip to the farmers’ market, from which “John carries the heavy sack home on his shoulder like a schoolboy hefting his sweetheart’s books.”

And there’s a sad irony: “… while Saskatchewan is producing food for the world, it is almost impossible to find the label “Product of Saskatchewan” in the local grocery store.”
As a girl, Ehman won ribbons for entries in the Craik and District Agricultural Fair. I’ll be chomping at the bit to see what prizes she deservedly earns for this inspiring book. I ate up her every word.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Coteau Books on 29 June 2010 – 7:10 pm | Comments (0)
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www.walkwithapolarbear.com

By SPG

www.walkwithapolarbear.com

www.withwithapolarbear.com
By Mercedes Montgomery
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing
Review by Joan Givner
$12.95 ISBN 978-1-894431-29-3

When Angela returns from holiday on her thirteenth birthday, she finds her room transformed into an arctic setting, complete with murals of polar bears. She has “had a thing” for polar bears ever since a family holiday in Jasper National Park. Subsequent chapters explain the source of her preoccupation, and take the form of an animal fable.

The polar bears of northern Manitoba have begun to have prophetic dreams of disaster. Led by a young bear called Nanuq, they convene to discuss the cause and remedy. The cause is global warming, melting ice, and the disappearance of their food source. They decide that the hope for saving their habitat lies with the children of the world, and resolve to find children and make them aware of their plight. Nanuq makes the arduous journey to Jasper, where he sees Angela. They are brought together when he rescues her from an accident on the ski-slope. From that moment on, she is converted to the cause of saving the polar bears and joins forces with others converted to activism by the traveling bears.

Like most animal fables, this one has a strong moral theme. It combines the call to environmental activism with the message that young people can make a difference to the world. That they are the future is evidenced by the fact that Angela’s commitment lasts into adulthood. Her life’s work becomes the study of the polar bears of Wapusk National Park.

The combination of realism and fable works well to give the book a strong appeal. Angela is a fully realized character with whom readers can easily identify. She comes with protective parents, older and younger sisters, and an annoying brother. For those who are converted to the cause of helping polar bears, Montgomery supplies a useful bibliography of articles, books, and websites.

Posted in Your Nickel's Worth Publishing on 21 June 2010 – 10:13 pm | Comments (0)
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This Hot Place

By SPG

This Hot Place

“This Hot Place”
By Bernadette Wagner
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Andréa Ledding
$17.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-73-7

Bernadette Wagner shines bright lights in dark places, taking the reader unflinchingly through the tunnels, plateaus, and heights of life – life as a woman, on the western Canadian prairies.

Her poetry is divided in to three sections representing a woman’s lifespan – Maiden, Mother, Crone. Each section is filled with poetic story – the joy and sorrow of experiences within these stages, often from a very personal and vulnerable space in the narrator’s life.

A strong sense of place, memory, experience, character, and authentic voice is created from the outset. Harvest-time, farm auctions, sibling rivalry, childhood innocence and its loss, adolescence, sexuality and violation all come to light in the caringly parsed pages of “Maiden”.

“Mother” at once explores the specific and the universal: the feeding of the first infant, rituals of toddlerhood, grocery store moments, and others met along the way. Wagner births emotion and compassion along with children, as she shares moments, experiences, and the roller-coaster ride that every parent will recognize in each stage and encounter. Tied into that universal experience of parenthood is the specific prairie passage of being rural-raised and now urban-dwelling: “So much has changed/the land is in someone else’s name/ highway #22, once paved, is now graveled/our babies are now teens, gifts that arrived/in times of doubt and drought.” The lost lands and farms are akin to the birth, growth and eventual separation from our own offspring.

Wagner also takes care in her poetry to examine the bigger picture: the evolution of agriculture, the large corporations, judgmental attitudes in society. She is a keen observer with a sense of justice tempered by compassion. But her larger examinations of society are carefully balanced by intimate moments of personal grief and loss, such as the poem “Sisterless” – “Twelve squares to this quilt./How I want to pull it from its dowel,/wrap it round our grief,/wipe tears with its wine-red edge.” – and the ones that follow, giving voice to the haunting, or sometimes very real and practical, expressions of grief we all encounter.

The final section, “Crone”, gently examines family secrets, abandoned farms, aging parents, and the ancient and sacred feminine – completing the journey for the reader, and bringing it full-circle.

Wagner’s honesty and emotion in this poetic narrative efficiently sow, grow, and reap the fields of memory and place, providing an abundant crop for the reader to harvest.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR VISIT WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Thistledown Press on 10 June 2010 – 4:31 pm | Comments (1)
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Interruptions in Glass

By SPG

Interruptions in Glass

“Interruptions in Glass”
Written by Tracy Hamon
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-426-2

If there’s a theme in the stylistically-varied poems inside Regina writer Tracy Hamon’s second book, “Interruptions in Glass,” it might be that most of the pieces seem to ponder the question: “How do we lead a good life?” Smart woman that she is, Hamon doesn’t offer answers, but in disparate poems that follow trails of desire, loneliness, the seasons, and literary and mythic figures, she surreptitiously asks compelling questions while spelling out what it’s like to be a complex woman in a complex world.

There’s a zinger of a phrase in almost every poem. She writes that “sentences chauffeured along” (“A Phone Call from an Imaginary Friend”); of the “gradual\winch of swollen lids” (“How to Walk the Road to Nowhere”); of boats that “hip-check the dock” (“After the Storm”); and, in this highly body-aware collection, of an “autumn arm\driftwood shoulder” (“The Heart Takes a Plunge”).

The titles reflect the book’s sometimes somber tone, but Hamon juxtaposes these serious, reflective pieces with great dobs of humour, as demonstrated in “Something to do on your Birthday,” in which the narrator suggests placing an ad in the newspaper’s personals column; and in the three interspersed poems “In the Absence of Conversation I” (II and III). The second of these short poems begins “Eat a play” and the third suggests “Eat a snowman.” Ha!

Hamon’s been a fixture on Saskatchewan’s literary forefront for several years, with numerous publications and CBC radio broadcasts; awards including the City of Regina Award; and as founder of the Regina’s Vertigo Reading Series. The mother of two and Program Officer for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild recently completed an MA in English, and – if all this isn’t enough – she also works part-time as a barber\stylist. It’s not surprising, then, that images from this profession appear in her work. In “Why I’m Not a Lilac,” she views lilacs as “lavender coiffed buns bound by brown stick-\pins rapidly popping from bee-hived dos.” From the poem “Surrender”: “Let me explain. Your hair\holds unusual fascination\an insistent need to comb\myself in”. In “Things Lost in Hair,” she surprises with items like “a pink Barbie shoe” and “mother’s sewing scissors”.

Among the prose poems, columnar poems, couplets, and indented poems, one of my favourite moments is found in the tercets (three-lined stanzas) of “Some People Eat Dirt,” where a grandfather would “bring a jug -\A&W rootbeer, the brown-bottled gallon” from the drive-in where “the mugs outweighed the waitresses.” With the poet’s keen eye, Hamon sees what we’ve all seen – at least those of us who recall A&W drive-ins and those monstrous drinks – but she gives the image a twist. Her unique slant – or her interruption in the mirrored glass of memory – brought a smile to my face.

Finally, I love the little poem that makes itself with two of Hamon’s finest lines
(from different poems): “Loneliness is an owl. Up all night” and “There is nothing to do when desire\is a virus.”
“Interruptions in Glass” is an engaging collection, any way you look at it.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

Posted in Coteau Books on 2 June 2010 – 5:24 pm | Comments (1)
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