SaskBooks Reviews

Vidh, A Book Of Mourning by Phyliss Nakonechny Published by Hagios Press Review by Sharon Adam $18.95 978-1-926710-06-8 Following the death of her husband, Phyliss Nakonechny devoted much of her time to the pursuit of understanding grief and grieving. She asked the question “what does it mean to be a widow?” and came away empty-handed. What she learned is the stark, utterly personal nature of such a quest. However, she discovered a few signposts along the way which she now shares in hope of helping others through their own journey. The first thing Phyllis found was a simple word: Vidh. Vidh is known as the ancient Sanskrit word for widow and widowhood. However, Vidh has a second meaning stemming from ancient India that few know: it also expresses notions of “apart, lacking, and empty.” Not a misery memoir, but a voice for every woman who will become a widow, Nakonechny’s book also provides an insight for men who are left behind. Death and dying are two entirely different things. When your spouse is dying, there are still moments of tenderness, intimacy and the sense of the person being there. In death there is nothing but memory. Everything that was physical…

After the Words by Jennifer Londry Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-1-992671-00-3 Jennifer Londry’s handsome new poetry collection, After The Words, feels like a play consisting of vignettes, and readers are given much room for their own imagining. The setting is a care home, where the occupants – including the poet’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother – wander the halls, their voices and faculties fading in and out. Can poetry be made of this terrain? Of course. And it’s important that it is. Londry, a Kingston, Ontario writer, has been busy. She published her first book of poetry – with the provocative title Life and Death in Cheap Motels – just last year. She was also busy keeping company with her ailing mother, and thus spent much time at “Providence Manor,” experiencing firsthand the decline of that woman and others plagued with dementia. But who was this woman in the years before she became ill? In “Lost Letters,” Londry eloquently writes: “A good daughter, read all of her letters\pieced together the torn edges the frayed\details\of what happened between watermarks\and age spots.” This type of poetry is a kind of therapy: hard to write, easy to relate to….

The Day is a Cold Grey Stone 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. 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…

Fallout 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:…

White Light Primitive by Andrew Stubbs Published by Hagios Press Review by Andréa Ledding $17.95 ISBN 978-0-9783440-8-5 Breathtaking and profound, White Light Primitive is the first poetry collection of Regina writer and University of Regina English professor Andrew Stubbs, and reads like a collection from a seasoned and well established poet in his prime. Stubbs fills the beautifully written pages with wisdom, diversity, and detail. An author of three other books, a teacher of composition and rhetoric, and a student of Eli Mandel, Stubbs demonstrates his belief in Mandel’s claim that “memory is sacred” throughout the collection. A brief but moving essay opens the book, explaining the inspiration of the first section, “War” – poetry inspired by a shoebox of photographs from his father’s experiences during World War II. In exploring and speculating upon his father’s generational memories – which included the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – Stubbs carefully crafts language to hand over to the reader delicately rendered snapshots of life based largely around war, memory, and loss. “As I went through my father’s pictures I learned a lesson. You can look straight at a thing and not see it, despite the cool, apparently natural co-operation of…

About Pictures by Terry Fenton Published by Hagios Press Review by Andréa Ledding $20.95 ISBN 978-0-9783440-9-2 About Pictures is just that –a perfect companion for students, collectors, art-lovers, or gallery-aficionados. Reading at the 2009 Saskatchewan Book Awards from this nominated book, Fenton said “It’s about pictures, it’s got pictures, it’s short, and it’s only $20.” All selling-points, but the book covers an impressive range of material in a short span, comprising brief essays interspersed with over 30 beautiful glossy images. Fenton’s portable soft cover edition is a witty companion and tour guide of the art world, drawing from careful research and personal philosophy combined with years of education and experience as gallery director, curator, and critic. It’s a must-have for everyone who likes art, wishes to know more about it, or wants to “brush up” on the basics. Fenton believes in the value of a good question, using them generously before providing answers, while sharing professed favourite works of art. He explains of his title that artist Henri Matisse used the word “pictures” in his quote “Above all, pictures are illusions.”, and Matisse also described art as “something like a good armchair, providing relaxation from physical fatigue” – a likely…

House Beneath” by Susan Telfer Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-1-926710-02-0 The title of Susan Telfer’s first collection of poetry, House Beneath, is ripe with metaphorical possibilities. It suggests that readers will be privy to a story beneath the official story, that there is – or was – more going on than meets the public eye. The book begins, uniquely, with a photograph of the poet’s parents circa 1964. An attractive, healthy and happy-looking pair, they “smile with their teeth.” But the book’s darker undertones are expressed in the opening poem’s final lines: “He was already learning to mix rye and soda. She was\reading in Dr. Spock to let me cry.” In my reading, I’ve noticed that first books almost constitute a sub-genre within poetry. Often poets air childhood demons in these books; or recount adolescence; first loves and early mistakes; and, quite commonly, their relationship with their parents. The latter is the focus of Telfer’s collection. With both now deceased, she peels back the layers of family, showing us that her “famous” father – “your picture still on boardroom walls,\only man in town with a tie,\first to buy a computer,\ first house with…

Gabriel’s Beach by Neal McLeod Published by Hagios Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-0-9783440-5-4 “With the stories and the strength of our ancestors, we can find our home in the river again.” These are among the introductory words of Neal McLeod, a writer, visual artist, film-maker, comedian, and professor at Trent University in Peterborough, ON, and in his poetry collection Gabriel’s Beach, we find some of the stories and individuals this champion of Cree and Métis culture pays homage to. The “Gabriel” of the title is the poet’s mosôm (grandfather), a respected soldier who fought at Juno Beach, “where thunder met\the water,” and one of the many ancestors from whom the poet draws strength during his own personal battles. McLeod thanks Gabriel for “teaching us that that fire of the beach helps us to survive and keeps us from surrender,” but admits that in his own life, he has been a “son of a lost river, unable to hold the fire of Gabriel’s beach.” The book’s first section is a mostly serious tribute to Gabriel and others, and it relays some of the war horrors Gabriel and fellow soldiers experienced: “hunger made them crazy\stomachs empty\vessels without holding\they…

If readers are at all familiar with Saskatchewan literature, they are familiar with Gary Hyland. His list of awards – literary, teaching, community-based – is long and impressive, including, recently, the Book of the Year and the Poetry Award (2008 Saskatchewan Book Awards) for “Love of Mirrors: Poems New and Selected”. With “You,” however, Hyland fans can expect a somewhat different voice than in earlier publications.

It’s clear that the poet also keeps one eye on the larger world, fraught as it is with economic crises, ecological issues, and war. Safarik, then, is the best kind of seer