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:…

Gaits 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…

Interruptions in Glass 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…

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…

Like the Mimosa by Eusebio L. Koh Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Reviewed by Cindy Dean-Morrison $16.95 CDN ISBN 978-1-894431-22-4 Like the Mimosa by Filipino-Canadian author Eusebio L. Koh promises an exotic experience. It does not fail. Koh immediately transports the reader into his beloved Filipino world using brilliant descriptions, memorable characters, occasional Filipino words, and humour. He shares intimate truths via stories, poems and essays. In the short story section we are immediately pulled in by “Soap” which deals with the Japanese occupation of the Philippines at the start of WW II. Koh begins, “In times of war, life is as fragile as it gets.” One might expect dark events after that introduction, but Koh tells the story from a precocious boy’s viewpoint who has a great sense of humour and humanity. All the stories read as colourful history, studies in family dynamics, and explorations of cultural mores. Koh writes exquisitely crafted cinquains, sonnets, and free verse poems. He explores love, nature, war, faith and Saskatchewan prairie spirit. Perhaps common poetic themes, but Koh is anything but common in his approach. In fact, the poems are often surprising. Love, for example, is reflected in the poem “Theorems.” “Theorems…

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…

This is the Nightmare by Adrienne Gruber Published by Thistledown Press Reviewed by Carrie Prefontaine $12.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-52-2 Adrienne Gruber’s This is the Nightmare is a collection of deeply reflective poems that will appeal to anyone seeking to understand the complexities of love and language. “I don’t pick up foreign languages well,” the poet laments in “Dead Language,” and this is a theme carried throughout “Limbo,” the first section of the volume. Whether the poet is speaking a “jumbled commentary on who we never were” in “Our Frantic Language,” or reading the “Tabloid Poems” that “scald a pink fleshy tongue,” words themselves are suspect. In these poems, language is most meaningful when it manifests through the physical. In “How I Find You,” for example, emotional pain is written vividly all over the subject’s face: “You have the face of a Japanese bowl, / charred raw strokes of paint along your cheekbones, / plump and full, designed with clear intent, / your jaw tight, and pouring / out of you, something cold.” The poems in section two, This is the Nightmare explore grief, carrying forward the complex search for connection, sense of self, and meaningful language. “[G]rief is a kind of…

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…

correction line by Dennis Cooley Published by Thistledown Press Reviewed by Kelly-Anne Riess $15.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-50-8 Dennis Cooley’s long poem correction line is both touching and poignant, recreating memory and the prairie landscape. Cooley shows his many talents, as his work is vernacular, funny, anecdotal and personal, touching on his own family history. correction line plays with ideas around creation and how things, like poetry, are produced. For instance he writes in response to his surrounding geography, but also from what he’s learned studying others’ poetry and literary theory over the last 30 years or so. A correction line is a device used to compensate for the curve of longitude. And Cooley’s book follows the line between his beginnings in Estevan, Saskatchewan to his current home of Winnipeg. It also traces a poetic line to American poet Charles Olson, writing: /an O pening of the field/ At the beginning of the book, Cooley almost quotes Eli Mandel’s poem “Life Sentence” in its entirety. Mandel was the first poet from Estevan, and now Cooley is the second. Cooley’s words are more than semantic, as he uses them for visual effect. On one page, for example, the words physically create the appearance…