Another quintet of book reviews.

“Leaving Mr. Humphries”

by Alison Lohans

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$12.95  ISBN 978-1-927756-07-2

     There are some writers you can always depend on to turn out a good book, regardless of the genre. I first knew Regina author Alison Lohans as a short story writer for young adults. She’s also impressed me with her novels and children’s books. The ability to genre-hop and keep the literary standards at high-bar are Lohans’ trademarks, so I’m not surprised that Leaving Mr. Humphries, her tender story about a child reluctant to let go of his stuffed blue teddy bear, Mr. Humphries, also delivers a read that simultaneously entertains and plucks at the heart-strings.

     This book is the result of a familial collaboration: it’s illustrated by Gretchen Ehrsam, Lohans’ American cousin, who-like the author-enjoyed childhood vacations at the family’s cottage in Dorset ON.

     What first impressed was how quickly I was engaged. With kids’ books, writers don’t have the luxury to slowly beguile readers, and Lohans instantly gets us into the main character’s head and heart-space.

     Josh is the protagonist. His mother is off to “a conference in the city,” and he’ll

have to stay with Grandpa and Aunt Judy at their cottage. “My insides have a lonely, hurting feeling. I hold on tight to Mr. Humphries,” we read on page one. The story unfolds in clear, short sentences-the kind a child might “think” in-and images are credibly presented in the same way: “[Aunt Judy] helps me into a fat orange life jacket.”

     As three generations enjoy a motorboat ride, outdoor meals (“Bugs bang into the screens but they can’t get us”), pie baking, and exploring, Lohans does a superb job of keeping the story in Josh’s young voice. She also believably demonstrates his anxiety re: sleeping in the attic, where “bats flap and squeak,” and using the outdoor toilet in the dark, raccoon-filled night. As long as Josh has the security of Mr. Humphries, he manages well.

     A secondary theme in this book is aging. Josh frequently notes his grandfather’s advanced age. “Mr. Humphries and I wade in the lake while Grandpa sits in a chair,” Lohans writes. The boy sees his grandfather as “old and shaky,” and his hands shake when he works on a jigsaw puzzle. His daughter warns him not to take the boat out alone.

     Lohans is also a musician, and her use of sound in this book stands out. She writes: “On the lake, a loon makes lonely sounds,” “feet clang on the metal steps,” and “Hummingbirds whir at the feeder.” Josh notes how “The bottom of the boat scrunches on sand” and “Water slurps and splashes.”

     There are no notes on the accompanying full-page illustrations, but they look like woodcut prints and perfectly mirror the story’s subject and tone.   

     Regardless of their intended audience, children’s book have to first pass muster with the wallet-holders. Free copies are generally part of the payment for book reviewers, so I asked myself this: were I not reviewing Leaving Mr. Humphries, would middle-aged me buy this book? You bet your blue teddy bear I would.    

 

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

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“Red River Raging”

by Penny Draper

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$10.95  ISBN 9-781550-505849

 

     It’s a dull, wet day and I’ve nowhere to be but home-hurray!-because today I’ve had the distinct pleasure of reading Penny Draper’s novel Red River Raging cover-to-cover, and it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

     Coteau Books published Red River Raging as part of its Disaster Strikes! Series, which includes six other Draper titles. After reading this latest book, I certainly see why Coteau keeps Draper on its publication roster: this “Juvenile Fiction” is a terrific story, skillfully told, and I’m happy to sing its praises to readers of any age.

      The back cover copy whet my appetite for this gripping Manitoba-flood-based, coming-of-age story. Thirteen-year-old Finn is the only child of Vancouver scientists, and while his parents are off to Russia, their reluctant son’s exiled to the rural, St. Agathe MB home of his cookie-baking grandmother and crusty-but mysterious-great grandfather.   

     Finn quickly makes friends at school, including Clara, who becomes his girlfriend (and has an interesting side-story herself); and Aaron, who “got run over by a bale of hay” and is in a wheelchair. When a major flood threatens, Finn initially feels “It’s about as exciting as reading a murder mystery when you already know who the murderer is and when he’s going to strike,” but he soon learns how real and devastating it will be when the Red River becomes the Red Sea. He rallies classmates to create a sandbag-filling “Flood Club,” the military helps out, and even Peter Mansbridge arrives: “everybody’s saying that his being here officially makes this a disaster. Now we can panic.”

     One of Draper’s greatest achievements is how she seamlessly unrolls the plot of this adventure story-about the 1997 Red River flood disaster-and also spins out a very credible character story. I became completely entranced by the likeable and humorous narrator, Finn, but the author also does a bang-up job of developing secondary characters, like Aaron, and the young geography teacher, Ned; they seem like real people, not just “extras”.

     Finn tries to figure out his 94-year-old great grandfather, who goes by his surname, Armstrong, and “kind of looks like a garden gnome, only mean.” The boy is perceptive. He says “I’ll use my wiles to break into Armstrong’s mind,” and eventually the pair begin bonding over that great game, cribbage. Finn recognizes that when he’s with his parents on global assignments, his anthropologist father hires a grad student “supposedly to be my babysitter. But I’m actually bait. The grad student’s real job is to write a paper about how the local kids live. So they need me to get out there and play with all the kids.”

     We witness Finn transform from city boy to country boy, from a child to a young man who loves “to see the walls of white bags grow around somebody’s life and know that I’m helping them protect what they love the most.”

     There is an exceptional, other-worldly sub-plot that I don’t want to give away: please buy this eminently satisfying book, and discover it. Wow, wow, wow.    

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

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“Every Happy Family”

by Dede Crane

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-55050-548-1

 

     After finishing Every Happy Family, by Victoria-based Dede Crane, I felt the warmth of being included in a family that truly loves and cares for each other, despite divergent interests and personalities. In short, I felt this family’s embrace.

      Crane’s novel is a realistic study of family and the complex relationships that develop between generations, between husbands and wives, and between siblings. Readers are privy to the private thoughts, fears and hopes of various members of the Wright family over a period of five dynamic years.

     The story is told through the perspectives of each of the Wrights. Introspective Jill is an “itinerant linguistics scholar”. Words matter to this woman. Her Sandwich Generation responsibilities involve caring for her increasingly eccentric mother (the older woman spontaneously invites two men and a woman-“we need a fourth for bridge”-to live with her), and parenting three teenaged children: studious Quinn; athletic Beau; and adopted Tibetan daughter, Pema. The familial roster also includes Jill’s husband, Les, and her artsy sister-in-law, Annie.      

      Crane’s taken on a large cast and she’s successfully created completely individual identities for each member. It was interesting to watch this family grow and change as life dealt it some heavy hands. One of the most intriguing story- lines concerns Pema, a “hormone soup” when we first meet her at age 14. At the outset, a letter’s arrived from Pema’s birth mother, and although Les is supportive of a reconnection, Jill can’t emotionally process it. A few years later Pema travels to Jampaling to meet and live with her biological family. When she’s sharing a bed-“a grass-stuffed mattress on top of two wool carpets”-with her step-sisters, she remembers back to when “Her biggest concern in life [was] matching the colour of her highlights to her shoes.”

     Quinn becomes an architecture student who eventually connects with a woman his educated mother will look down upon. One of his endearing idiosyncrasies is his habit of thinking of people as the buildings he feels would best represent them. His girlfriend, Holly, is the architectural equivalent of “an old-style cement water tower on a smooth expanse of prairie.”  

      As in real life, these characters are sometimes delightfully bizarre. Creative Auntie Annie makes leather cumberbunds and flapper tops from plastic straws. She has “a collection of nineteen house keys stolen from lovers.”

      Illness plays a roll with two characters, and when one is dealing with cancer, he credibly states: “It’s like having someone sit on your shoulder and whisper ‘you’re sick, you’re sick, you’re sick’ in your ear while you’re trying to think about something else.”

       Families are not static, as Crane ably demonstrates. Late in the book we read “How well can we know anyone?” Even when living beneath one roof, it’s difficult for family members to truly know each other. Then the kids grow up, move on, and life spins beyond anyone’s control. By the time you reach the novel’s final scene, you’ll feel like you’re right in the room. Crane delivers a heart-rending experience.     

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

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“Fog of the Outport”

by Robin Durnford, artwork and design by Meagan Musseau

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-07-8

     JackPine Press is well-known for publishing artsy chapbooks. I was prepared for the unconventional, but admit I didn’t know how to approach Fog of the Outport. The textless, off-white cover and grey, hand-stitched spine offered no clues as to what might be inside, thus genre, creators, and even the title awaited discovery.

     I opened the book and was delighted to find a dramatic landscape reflected in silkscreen prints; a design that merges with the unfoldable back cover to create an innovative, three-paneled panorama.

      This limited-edition chapbook, written by Robin Durnford, and illustrated\ designed by Meagan Musseau-Newfoundlanders both-is a gorgeous collaboration featuring prose poems named for each month of the year-“february” to “february”. It’s a memorial to the life of the poet’s father, whose own father died when he was five, and it’s an homage to Durnford’s widowed grandmother, left with nine children to care and provide for on “the exposed bone-belly” of Francois NFLD, an isolated, south coast outport.

     There is story here, and art, and language that made my mouth water. In the first “february” piece, one does not so much read as she does listen to the words:

     “this story begins in the rock-slide sea-bowl of one lost harbor, secreted amongst the gull-ridden shady rows of hills and cliffs stoic and reaching toward Miquelon. a parallel universe stuffed with the stink of fish guts and salt, tipping houses, thick with paint, falling slowly into persevering cliffs, slippery and wild, ice-crusted in winter, blooming in summer with the brambleberries and beach rocks, black flies and stouts …”

     I was so taken by the musical, alliterative phrases, like “we slipped lovely and lonely into the living again,” that I didn’t realize until the end of the second poem that the poet was cleverly inserting rhyme into her stanzas, ie: “the mom in the kitchen, clutching arms to her chest, nine boiled potatoes on nine plates for the rest.” Hunger’s both depicted and symbolically represented in the hard-consonants and uncapitalized, long-sentenced, prose poem form.

     This could be a handbook for what it’s like to grow up in Newfoundland. We have “red-bottomed rubbers,” “sprayed shellfish and sticky dories,” “black waves and dips, reaching for savagely granite-stacked cliffs.” There are mummers, described as “snowstorm-hurled gargoyles” who scare the child with their “shape-shifting in kitchens.”

     In the hard year that followed her grandfather’s death, the poet’s dad failed Grade One, explored a shipwreck, and “sprouted and frolicked, choked on lobster and Pollock.” The chapbook is rife with hyphenated words that really hit the mark: “sea-urchin throat,” “blood-bogs,” “fuzz-bearded tuckamore” and “stink-sinking marsh” are among my favourites.

     This rich language is balanced against digital reproductions of Musseau’s delicate ink and watercolour paintings, which suggest landscapes rather than mirror them.

     Fog of the Outport will satisfy those poetry-lovers who mourn the absence of rhyme in contemporary poetry, and it will sate aficionados of free-verse\prose-poetry. Google” Fog of the Outport CBC” for an excellent televised feature (“Land and Sea”) on the creators and story behind this book.

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

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“Stepping Out from the Shadows: A Guide to Understanding & Healing from Addictions”

by Allan Kehler

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-927756-12-6

     Unhealthy addictions are prevalent in contemporary society, and if you visit any bookstore, you’ll note that books about addictions also fill the shelves. When one who’s experienced the wrath of addiction puts pen to paper, it tends to add weight to the words. Allan Kehler is a Saskatchewan author, addictions counsellor, educator, and presenter, and he’s also struggled with both addictions and mental illness. His book Stepping Out from the Shadows: A Guide to Understanding & Healing from Addictions, is an easy-to-read guide for those struggling with addictions, and for those who love and support them.

     Kehler names some of the reasons why one might become addicted to a substance or behavior (like compulsive gambling or over-eating). These include a lack of love and nurturing within the home environment, mental illness, peer pressure, or some specific trauma which resulted in suppressed emotions. “The person takes comfort knowing that something exists that will bring them out of their painful reality.” As use escalates, however, a habit that was once a “want” evolves into a “need.”

     The author also addresses “the face of addiction.” Society may stereotype addicts, as the author confesses he once did. His preconceived notion of an addict-“an older man dressed in torn and dirty clothes … wild and tangled hair … fingers wrapped tightly around a bottle, or a needle protruding from his arm”-made it hard to identify himself as an addict. That notion, he explains, is no longer valid: addiction does not heed age or social status.

     Kehler backs his text up with statistics. He writes that a U of A psychiatrist and addictions expert discovered “that while seven out of 10 [addicts] continue to be employed, less than 10 percent are actually identified as having addictions.”     

      He also talks about responsibility, and says that while “the disease of addiction isn’t a choice … the behavior is.” “It is the addict who initially chose to pick up the bottle the pill, the joint, the cards, the food, etc.” The compulsion to continue the destructive behaviour is so strong, he explains, that when one is told to stop “this can sound like being told to stop breathing.” That’s powerful stuff, and it really puts into perspective the vice-grip hold addictions can have on an individual. Kehler asserts that talking and letting people in are key to recovery. 

     In Stepping Out from the Shadows I learned that “Addicts tend to avoid mirrors like the plague because they don’t want to see what they’ve become,” and that addictions may pause emotional growth, so if young people begin drinking heavily at age 15, their emotional age may remain at that age, “even if they stop drinking at 30.” What a frightening thought!

     This book is well-written, organized, and researched. It offers strong hope for addicts and their loved ones, and the fact that the author has battled and beat his own demons should be highly inspiring to those who feel they will never be happy, healthy and whole again.    

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

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A quintet of book reviews.

“The Trouble with Beauty”

by Bruce Rice

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 978-1-55050-572-6

   

      After completing poet Bruce Rice’s exquisite collection The Trouble with Beauty, the following question resounds: how can anyone not just appreciate poetry, but also help from falling deeply down the well in love with it? I consumed the bulk of the work in a coffee shop with an espresso machine, the conversation of strangers, and speakered-jazz trying their best to divert my attention, but Rice held me fast with his deeply-affective poems that explore landscape, the passing of time, the Self, and-as the title suggests-the beauty of it all.     

     

     Disclaimer: I know Rice, a seasoned Regina poet and editor, but when I read his work I completely disassociate the poems from the person. Great poetry enables this. Some poets manage a few good lines in a book. Some a few good poems. Rice hits the emotional jackpot line after line, transporting readers into a higher-planed world of light, passing clouds, and “the shallow brown river\that seems not to move, all the while cutting away the time we have left.”

     

     The Contents page itself reads like a poem as you scroll down the list of titles:

          Glossary of Hills 

          along some rivers

          Deer Dream

          Rodeo Rain

          On the road watched by horses

     Coincidental poetry, or intentional? I expect that all is intended by this poet who looks (“remains of the roses the wind took apart”) and listens (“branches click as if they were talking to horses”) so closely one might consider super-powers are involved.

     

     Rice credits photographers (and other poets) in his Acknowledgements. I argue that many of his images deliver almost photographic clarity themselves. In “Rodeo Rain” he shows “horse trailers\scattered like pieces of jigsaw puzzle\that just won’t fit.” In “Bicycle Notes” he describes a stone barn’s roof as “a well of timbers,\shingles draped like chain mail over a body\that has somehow forgotten to fall.” In this thick-for-poetry book that succeeds page upon page, one of my favourite images is “Last year’s round bales fall apart, become the shoulders\of an animal of hay.”

     

     Rice speaks of the truths no one addresses: “graveyards have things to say, and  say them gently.” Reading “Community Cemetery”-the poem this quote is lifted from-makes me want to dash to the nearest graveyard with paper and pen. That’s the power of inspired writing. It moves us, even physically.

     

     In a piece that honours his province, “Saskatchewan,” Rice imagines God walking on the prairie, coming to a three-stranded barbed-wire fence, and pushing the wires together “so He could get over-\the first time anyone had done that, getting the knack,\the beginning of something one does that everyone does.”

     

     The careful, accomplished poet eloquently addresses aging as “backing into a sunset.” Gorgeous.

     

     The Trouble with Beauty satisfied a place in my being that needed filling. Praise to the publisher, Coteau Books. I will keep this sublime volume within reach. 

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

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“In the Tiger Park”

by Alison Calder

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 9-781550-505764

     Sometimes one reads a book and, upon completion, thinks: Hmm, I bet I could be friends with this writer. This was my sentiment after completing In the Tiger Park by Winnipeg writer and university professor Alison Calder. What I most appreciated was Calder’s original and clear-eyed view on a variety of interesting subjects, including a dead poet’s clothes; impressions of Scottsdale AZ; witnessing a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken in a cold September lake; elephants; China; the moon; the experience of blind children; and football (Calder hales from a Saskatchewan Roughrider-loving clan).

     We sense the poet’s perceptiveness in her very first (and second longest) poem, “Blind children at the Natural History Museum, 1913,” in which she credibly describes how the various animals and objects might feel beneath the fingers of these children.

     The poem “On finding P.K. Page’s old clothes” is just three stanzas long-but they contain so much! We are treated to the wonderful world “selvedges” and to the ear-pleasing “They turn to metaphor\and mites.” We see “Their pearls glimmer\in cardboard darkness,” and when the dresses tear, we hear the sound as “a match striking.” It’s apparent that Calder understands the virtue of appealing to multiple senses.

     In another short and gentle poem, “The Tea Bowl,” the first line reads like Haiku: “At the temple gate, a tea bowl sits in the grass like a stone from a wall.” (For those counting, the sentence contains eighteen syllables, rather than the traditional seventeen, and that’s just fine.)

     Calder also demonstrates a good dose of humour in this collection, as when she dons the persona of a football referee: “I rule the coin toss. Sometimes I want to lie down\in the end zone and count: too many clouds\in the sky.” She also takes a stab at her own poetry, complaining about the preponderance of the moon and elephants in her work: “It’s getting so I can’t hit a key\without tripping over a moon or an elephant.”

     Does trivia interest you? You’ll find some in this collection. In “pigs” we learn that “science says pigs don’t need to turn around,” and in “Don’t think of an elephant” we read that “the first bomb dropped on Berlin in World War II\killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.”

     It is entirely easy to praise this book, with its sensitive insights and superb images. Consider this scene, observed while passing through Quill Lake: “the town was burning its elevator\bonfire huge and pagan,\small figures illuminated briefly as we passed.” In another poem, “The space between,” Calder writes that a bird’s nest is “made of air organized by twigs.” This is brilliance.

  

     In my book variety is indeed the spice of life. In this book the poet cleverly delivers, offering sheer delight on every page.  

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

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“Emily via the Greyhound Bus”

by Allison Kydd

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$9.95  ISBN 978-1-927068-09-0

  

     Saskatoon publisher Thistledown Press has long been a friend to first-time poets and prose writers via its New Leaf Edition Series, giving many writers (including yours truly) the generous break that launches a writing career.  

     

     Thistledown’s eleventh release of New Leaf titles puts writer Allison Kydd in the spotlight, and if you have a road trip or flight forthcoming, Kydd’s Emily via the Greyhound Bus could be your ideal companion. The 64-page story takes readers on a winter bus trip from Toronto to Saskatchewan and delves inside the private thoughts of its title character, a woman who-like many-“always rushed in before she knew where she was going.”

     

     On page one we learn that Emily, a First Nations’ woman, has left her longterm relationship and is now at an emotional crossroads. What should she do with her life? How might she begin again? Would a return to her reserve be a wise idea? Her crisis is heightened by the fact that her nausea on the bus may signal more than travel sickness: could she be pregnant again?

     

     Emily has much to contemplate. Her first two children have grown up with other families, and her personal history has been coloured by abuse, poverty, and bad choices, like leaving the convent school at seventeen “just to keep up with her reputation.” The confused protagonist considers her experiences with men-including college-boy Marty, who “was fascinated by some idea of going Native;” a first-cousin who raped her when she was thirteen; and her present partner, Jeremy.

     

     As the bus travels west she also has hours to think about the service industry work she’s done-cocktail waitress, short-order cook, desk clerk at a small hotel, and a gas jockey-and her relationships with family members. At one point she considers her mother’s appearance to be that of “a dumpy Fortrel pigeon,” and she muses that the sisters at the convent were not cruel, “rather, they seemed afraid to touch.”

     

     The story presents a kind of retrospective as the bus rolls through the night-“only the dim glow of a few reading lights held back the dark,”-and we discover that stereotypes continue to affect Emily, even as she sits in her seat minding her own business. This grim reality is believably portrayed, as both a fellow passenger and a bus driver believe they can easily possess her.

     

     In Moosomin the driver stops for a “ten-minute smoke break.” Emily, still feeling nauseous, steps off and is inadvertently left behind. “Alone, broke, and empty, she wished she were dead.” It is a triumph how Kydd moves Emily forward from this low point to a place of redemption at the end of the story.

     

     This insightful book would easily fit into your travel bag and shorten the journey. 

    

 

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

 __________

“man from elsewhere”

by Lorna Crozier

Published by JackPine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$30.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-09-2

  

     Swift Current-born Lorna Crozier is one of the brightest lights in Canadian poetry. If you read poetry-and no, it is definitely not a genre to be afraid of-you’ll know that her name is a household word among poetry readers. She’s published numerous critically-acclaimed books, has won the Governor General’s Award for poetry, presents internationally, and is one of Canada’s most read and appreciated poets.

      It’s difficult to know for certain why some poets succeed and others burn quietly or flash out immediately. Certainly for “staying power” one must possess talent and its sisters: originality, skilled craftsmanship, and intelligence. One must have interesting things to say, and express these things in masterful and memorable ways. It also helps to be entertaining. Crozier possesses all of these attributes. She’s made her readers laugh and cry, and one might argue she’s even shocked us over the years.

     Why then, would a big name poet publish a hand-bound, limited edition chapbook with Saskatchewan publisher JackPine Press? Perhaps because some work, like the fervent love poems found in man from elsewhere (co-created with Saskatonians Lisa Johnson and Stephen Rutherford), require a more personal and beautiful format than one normally finds in trade publishing. Maybe the chapbook is also an homage to Crozier’s birth-province. It could be that she recognizes and celebrates that JackPine Press is publishing not just poetry, but also physical works of art (one of the collective’s titles was printed on tear-out drink coasters, another was packaged in a powder-puff box).

     The eleven thematic poems in man from elsewhere are printed on lightly-patterned paper (Japanese Kozo and textured Strathmore), and there are only 75 copies of the saddle-stitched text in existence. Each poem is dedicated to a “man” from a different place, ie” “Man From Hades,” “Man From the Rainforest,” and “Main From Eden.” A consummate poet, Crozier knows how to work line-breaks to create layers, as we see in these lines about “three hounds the colour of snow” from her poem “Man From Hades 2”: 

          Their noses led them through the dark

          And I didn’t allow myself to wonder

          What they fed on.

     Crozier demonstrates an affinity for including animals in her work. Here examples include “the throat of a bird,” “the secrets of the hare, the spider’s rasp,” “hawk on the updraft,” and a “spider spinning\Her hunger across my belly”. In “Man From The Cariboo,” the narrator professes “I wanted\A horse more than a man”.

     My favourite in this lovely collection is “Man From Nunavut,” which brilliantly begins: “He came out of the snow,\Bones over his eyes\So he wouldn’t go blind.” The poet juxtaposes the frozen landscape against “flames\From the frozen fire.” 

      The reasons why Crozier and JackPine Press have collaborated really don’t matter. What does matter is that they have, and we should rejoice and be glad in it.

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

__________

“Rove”                                                                                                                                                   

by Laurie D Graham

Published by Hagios Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$17.95  ISBN 978-192671023-5

  

     I usually open a poetry collection expecting that the first few pages will provide a reasonably good sense of the author’s style and subject matter. In the opening pages of Rove, by London ON poet Laurie D Graham, I correctly gleaned that this writer would address a veritable smorgasbord of issues: political, environmental, First Peoples’, agricultural, poverty, health, and urban vs. rural. I also learned that this rapid-fire poet writes mostly in couplets, she often begins her lines with imperatives (“Say fluorescent lightbulbs will save\the earth, say there’s a heart” and “See the branches of the suburbs blossom wild with bungalows”), and that hers is indeed a distinct new voice on the CanLit scene. 

   

     Further into the book I realized that she also weaves in personal family history, and that I was often surprised and delighted by the myriad twists and turns this daring writer takes.

     Rove is a long poem that reads partly like a rant,

     “say the numbers, tell the Wheat Board where to go,

     say it fast like an auction and move to the city,

     say minimum wage and grunt while you work,”

partly like a prayer, and partly like memoir. (The poet’s ancestors are Ukrainian, and the Notes in the back decipher Ukrainian, Cree, Michif, and French words.) Graham, however, does not sacrifice the lyricism poetry is known for in her compelling poetic narrative. Just try saying this line aloud: “Now, in citied sleep, the sweepers sluicing the avenue\after the music’s turned off,” and you’ll understand.

     This engaging social commentary realistically surveys the prairie-Graham grew up in Sherwood Park AB and has paternal ties to SK-and its people. The poet writes of working dogs “Punch” and “Bullet” and how “one was shot, mistaken by the neighbour for a coyote”. There is also hockey here, a curling rink, “yarn and roses, crab apples, zucchini\old grass clippings in a garbage bag.” These are sweet remembrances, but by contrast there is also nostalgia for a way of life that’s been lost:

     “and the Pontiac dealership that sits there now, streetlit so bright

     the whole hamlet can’t see the stars it used to.”

     Occasionally the poet’s memory fragments even begin with the word “Remembering.” She remembers “geese moving, lake to park,\swaying the air between eavestroughs”. She recalls the hummingbird that accompanied her mother “as she walked back to the house with her hands full\of every colour of sweet pea imaginable.” I found numerous memorable “mother” images, including: “Your mother’s lips red like a brake light.”

     Rove reads like a river, sweeping the sediment of cultural and personal history together as it sweeps readers up with it, “Dizzy from the journeys we’ve made.” It’s both forceful and dreamy, critical and congratulatory. It is a book of place: a story of oil and Edmonton; of immigrants managing in the new world; of how disconnected our cities make us, and the reasons why we flock to them. It is a lament for “Home calling like a horn through fog.” It is a life.

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

Ten short stories about light: more reasons not to speak

Light story 1

Light story 2

Light story 3

Light story 4

L

Light story 5

Light story 6

Light story 7

Light story 8

Light story 9

Light story 10
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This photo essay on "light" was undertaken with my friend John Barron while hiking Mount Tzouhaleum near Duncan, BC. The crows had us entranced.

It was a day like that. Crows, light, then silence, and the darkening. I felt connected to something that mattered; my petty problems disappeared for hours.