Three Reviews: The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle by Harold Rhenisch; Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryu by Allison Douglas-Tourner; and Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin by Johnathan A. Allan;

“The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle”

By Harold Rhenisch

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 9-781779-400154

    

I was excited to read BC poet Harold Rhenisch’s The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle, as I know him to be a respected writer working in various genres—including fiction, nonfiction and memoir—and his poetry’s been recognized with several awards. The latest of his thirty-three books swims upstream with salmon through Cascadia’s rivers, sings the songs of history as experienced by the English and Chinook Wawa, laments how humans have abused this earth and each other, and praises the natural world and its creatures, from grass to mountains to sky. The poems, scored mostly in couplets, are detail-rich and I recommend reading them slowly to savour the language, names and ideas. It’s also helpful to read them in tandem with the author’s notes on the poems and his extensive glossary of Chinook Wawa—a blended language “of trade and diplomacy … as developed by the wives of traders at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River” that was commonly used across the Pacific Northwest.  

In naming these poems shanties (songs), one can rightfully expect that they’re musical. Readers hear grasshoppers “click-clacking in their bone song,” and the “crackle/of gravel from the wheels bringing us home.” There is, in fact, a lot of gravel in this book, including “glacier-washed gravel” and “platinum gravel,” and this demonstrates the poet’s particular facility with description. There’s also an abundance of grass: “wheatgrass,” “needle-and-thread grass,” “canary grass,” “porcupine grass,” “dune grass,” “bunchgrass,” “rye grass,” “cheatgrass,” and “mind’s/quick grass/braided by deft fingers around a black fire.” When a poet infuses this much effort into one element alone, we can appreciate how much consideration has gone into each poem, and can celebrate that the poet swapped out his early peach-picking “for the machine gun of free verse,” though he tells “young poets to run” and says “Books failed as keepers of men’s souls.”    

These are poems of journeys, place and legend. Of highways and “the light on the mountains, long after the beginning has ended.” And definitely, the themes of continuity and all things being “one” is woven throughout these accomplished pieces. “All of us star creatures are one breath,” Rhenisch writes in a poem titled “Round for the Mind of the World.” And in “Snass Shanty” we find “We are one substance,” and “Everything is rain. Everything is falling and then rising back up.” In a later poem, this truth: “Do we not/all have hands or wings or leaves or stamens or some damned thing/that can reach out and touch each other?” 

Indeed. And rare’s the bard who can make poetry of tossed whiskey bottles: 

     The empties flashed briefly, tumbling over and over, catching the Sun,

             blinding,

     before they landed among the tufted grouse, sagebrush sparrows, and

            sweat bees. 

They’ve been there ever since, home to spiders,”

Please do “Pull up a stump and share this campfire coffee.” You’ll rediscover what you may already know: “There is only the salmon and the salmon again,/and a boy’s going and our coming, and our coming and going.” 

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

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“Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryu”

By Allison Douglas-Tourner

Published by YNWP

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-77869-043-3

I’m fond of image-based poetry, and it’s one reason I enjoy reading poems written as haiku and senryu. Likely you remember haiku from school days: in its traditional form, it’s a three-line, seventeen-syllable nature-based poem with a five-seven-five syllable count. It conveys a single moment in which the poet suddenly sees or realizes something. An aha! moment, if you will. Senryu is similarly structured, but it’s more concerned with human nature and often contains irony or satire. Both forms originated in Japan, and both are unrhymed.

Victoria, BC’s Allison Douglas-Tourner recently released a lovely collection, Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryu, which reminded me of why I enjoy these concise forms so much. It’s easy to find inspiration from the natural world on Vancouver Island, and she explains that the island’s “beaches, woods, and meadows” have long been inspiring her. Ravens, those busy gatherers of “sticks and bones,” have also stirred her to write, and the attractive cover image of her small, square-shaped book features a single raven with twigs in its beak. There’s one page-centred poem per page with ample white space surrounding it … an ideal format for these untitled poems which invite one to linger, to roll the images and sounds and metaphors around in the mind before moving on to the next one. 

Consider the tenderness, the alliteration and the metaphor in the following: 

                                                 the gentle touch

                                                 of sunlight on stone

                                                 a tiny pair of shoes

I admire the poet’s ability to think of sunlight as “a tiny pair of shoes,” and this way of seeing and presenting things differently is the hallmark of good poetry. Here’s another wonderful metaphor:

                                                 last leaf to fall …

                                                 a threadbare

                                                 handkerchief

The ellipsis directs a reader to pause and it imitates the slow journey of a leaf from branch to ground. It’s autumn as I write this, so this seasonal piece especially appeals to me, and I love the idea of a leaf, probably shot-through with holes, being a “threadbare handkerchief.” And in this fall-themed poem, I drink in the warmth and revel, again, in the delicious metaphor:

                                                   autumn sun

                                                   a slow cup of 

                                                   smoky tea  

The following poem makes me consider mother-daughter relationships that can sometimes feel like a “broken clasp”.

                                                   broken clasp—

                                                   Mom’s cool hand

                                                   on my forehead

Douglas-Tourner is also adept at personification. She has a moth in a window “[holding] the storm at bay,” and a tree “scratches/at the shutters.” She uses assonance to great advantage in a poem that juxtaposes a blinking flashlight and a cricket “that/didn’t exist”. Her skill in writing about the senses is evident in several pieces. She writes of “the mildew scent/of mice” and of “coaxing the crystal/to sing”.

Many of these meditative and meticulous poems were previously published in international journals and on blogs. I will pick this book up again and again, as whether rooted in the natural or the domestic world, these tiny poems “[give] the imagination room to breathe,” and they make an impressive emotional mark. 

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

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“Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin”

By Johnathan A. Allan

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$32.95  ISBN 9-781779-4003307

    

Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin is a well-researched interdisciplinary book by Manitoba professor Jonathan A. Allan, and though it’s structured like most academic books I’ve read—with an introduction, an appendix, an impressive bibliography and index, and conclusions at the end of each chapter—the subject matter is completely unique, and perhaps not one my aunt will be discussing in her book club. Uncut gets up close and personal with foreskins. It includes the age-old debates concerning circumcision; aesthetics; the penis in art; the topic of cut/uncut sexuality; foreskin restoration; and it speaks of “the ongoing fear of the foreskin, since the foreskin is so absent from American culture.” 

Allan’s no stranger to sensitive topics. The Canada Research Chair in Men and Masculinities at Brandon University previously authored Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. I was curious to learn why he writes about “really rather odd topics”—like the pros and cons of foreskins—and found my answer in his introduction: 

     While it may be tempting to dismiss the foreskin as an irrelevant object of

     study, I argue the contrary by demonstrating not only how divisive debates

     about removing the foreskin have become, but also by showing ongoing

     confusion and curiosity about the foreskin.

He writes that “The medicalization of circumcision began in earnest in the nineteenth century,” as it was alleged that uncut males were more inclined to masturbate, which, it was believed, could lead to a host of medical ailments, including asthma and deafness. Today, most readers are likely aware of the debates for and against circumcision. The “for” camp cite reasons including medical, hygiene, religion, aesthetics (some parents want their infant boys to look like Dad), and even locker room bullying. The “intactivists” consider the pain and “mutilation” of the act, potentially decreased sexual pleasure, and economics, too, can play into the decision not to circumcise: in Canada, only Manitoba still covers the procedure, if completed within “the first twenty-eight days of life.”

Allan further states this his “interest is very much in the division and how the foreskin is represented and understood,” and he does a fine job of proving that division via a wide variety of resources, from Sex and the City quotes (“there was so much skin. It was like a Shar-Pei”) to Dr. Spock’s revised advice on circumcision (“he decided it was no longer necessary”). 

In his analysis of pregnancy/parenting books, he found that overall the advice re: circumcision is that the choice should ultimately be left up to the parents. The writer also found that bodily “norms” are in flux, and points to bodies in the history of art, ie: David and in pornography. 

The author presents an extensive and balanced debate re: the pros and cons of foreskins. Unlike pro-circumcision Charlotte in Sex and the City, Allan “[flips] the narrative that the foreskin is ugly, and instead [argues] that the foreskin is beautiful,” and he writes that “perhaps we ought to just leave the foreskin alone.”    

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

 

 

Three Reviews: Soulworm by Edward Willet; Releasing Your Need to Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women by James Butler; and Get Your Footprints Out Of My Garden by K.J. Moss

"Soulworm "

by Edward Willett

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$22.99  ISBN 978-1-989398-80-7

 

I missed it the first time, but what’s old is new again—Aurora Award-winning author Edward Willett’s YA fantasy novel, Soulworm, has been auspiciously re-released. What a treat to read the book that launched the prolific Regina writer’s impressive career in 1997, especially as I’ve so enjoyed his subsequent books. And prolific is an understatement: the heralded author, publisher, podcaster, actor and singer has written more than sixty books, including science fiction and nonfiction titles.

The opening scene of Willett’s new and revised edition immediately pulled this reader in: it’s 1984, near Weyburn, SK, and seven paragraphs into the story, three teens are in a horrific car accident. After the “car rolled six times in a welter of mud and water, tortured metal, and breaking glass,” it landed upright, and, hauntingly, Van Halen was still “blasting, the thump of the bass like a club pounding the ground.” Exceptional writing. And that’s what one can expect from this seasoned writer, all the way through this adrenalin-charged tale.

The story’s simultaneously old-school otherworldly—complete with torches, a tower and drawbridge—and rooted in Earthly details. Sixteen-year-old Liothel is an “Acolyte” in female-only Wardfast Mykia. It’s 2967. She was orphaned as a baby and thus has never known a true, loving family, though she’s surrounded by other Acolytes, Warders (those who’ve Manifested their Talent(s) of “Detection” …. and/or “Exorcism”), “Sentinels” and her beloved chief tutor, aging Jara.

Liothel’s a late-bloomer: she wonders if she will ever Manifest a Talent, necessary for “[contributing] directly to Mykia’s most important work, the continuing battle against the soulworms.” The eponymous “evil” soulworms “live to eat and reproduce … they thrive on negative emotions … infiltrate their victims, influence their actions …. Feed, and grow; and then, when the time is right, in a paroxysm of physical violence, they spawn … and the cycle repeats.” Creator forbid one ever finds its way to “violent” Earth, the “parallel world,” through the hole that’s “hidden, guarded, and watched,” because it would thrive in the here and now. Lionel’s daily life is “unchanging,” apart from witnessing the odd exorcism, but soon there’s a new teenaged Acolyte (and new roommate) in Mykia. Before we return to Weyburn, we’re introduced to Kalia—and Liothel’s instantly wary of the battered refugee.  

Most of the story does take place in the “real” world. I won’t reveal the connection, but will tell you that on Earth, accident survivors and former best friends Maribeth and Christine are no longer themselves. After waking from a two-month coma, Maribeth suffers “moments of oddness,” and the television “[makes] her pulse race.” Christine’s flipped her proverbial lid, and heads up a new gang called the “Ice Devils.” Fortunately, new student Adam, becomes Maribeth’s ally … and more.

Willett’s rich imagination and his almost magical ability to create stories that simultaneously straddle the world we know—fluorescent lights, football, and all— and the unique one he authentically creates is the reason he’s gained so many fans, and I am surely among them.          

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

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“Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women”

Written by James Butler

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$21.99 ISBN 9-781990-863301

 

I wanted to review Releasing Your Need To Please: Escaping Romantic Relationships with Narcissistic Women because of the premise. It’s unusual, in my experience, to read about female narcissism, but Saskatoon counsellor and author James Butler writes that there’s a “growing phenomenon of women who perpetuate narcissistic abuse.” The men they’re in relationship with are the “pleasers,” and Butler says the only way for a pleaser to live a happy, healthy life is to leave the narcissistic relationship. “If … you are looking for help to escape your toxic relationship, this book is definitely for you,” the disclaimer states. The self-help book’s purpose is “to offer information about how to get out of unfixable, unsustainable, dangerous relationships.” Pleasers must break the “never-ending cycle” of “manipulation and accommodation,” once and for all, and Butler advises them to “lawyer up before [they] plan to escape.”  

It can be a “disease to please.” Narcissists and pleasers attract one another because of a deep need for love and acceptance that, Butler maintains, they didn’t get enough of as children. He speaks frequently of the “trauma bond”—“The connection created by the repetitive cycle of neediness and pleasing between a narcissist and a pleaser.” Pleasers continually repress their own thoughts, wants and needs to accommodate their partners’. Again, he points to child-parent relationships: “Since his emotional needs were rarely met, [the pleaser] did not learn that his feelings, wants, and needs mattered. In order to emotionally survive he had to please …”  A “desperate need for external validation” from one’s partner demonstrates an insecure attachment style.

Butler refrains from using the word “victim,” as he believes everyone has a choice to leave or stay. Choice equals power. It’s integral to “[get] honest with yourself,” however difficult that is, and to learn “the skills of disengagement and detachment.” Trusting one’s self is key.  

Doesn’t everyone know a narcissist and a pleaser? Narcissists feel “empty, lonely, powerless and needful,” Butler writes. Like pleasers, they have serious self-esteem issues. In relationship, they can be “irresponsible, controlling, volatile, manipulative, and unstable.” Pleasers are “adept at rationalizing the abusive relationship …. in order to repress deep trauma and fears of confronting the perceived pain of separation.” They “normalize” their mate’s control over them, blame themselves, and often believe that if they remain agreeable, she will change.

I feel it’s fair to say that many people believe that even a toxic relationship—rife with “confusion, anxiety, self-doubt, defeat, worthlessness, mental anguish, panic attacks, and loss of identity”—is better than being alone, so they continue to repress themselves rather than doing the hard work (including the “legitimate suffering of grief”) necessary to “escape the hell that has become their comfort zone.” Fear of abandonment is huge, and it ruins lives.  

I appreciated the occasional anecdotes in this thought-provoking text, and learned that “turning the mirror around” is an important step in regaining one’s power. Why? Because “Creating happiness and love is an inside job.” Sage advice from an inspiring, experienced professional.   

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

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“Get Your Footprints Out of My Garden”

Written by K.J. Moss

Published by Wood Dragon Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99 ISBN 9-781990-863509

 

Poetry can sometimes be obscure and leave readers feeling that they just don’t “get” the work, and thus, they’re unable to connect with it. No one could accuse Moose Jaw resident Karran Moss, a longtime Registered Massage Therapist and new poet, of writing ambiguous work: the poems in her fifty-piece collection, Get Your Footprints Out Of My Garden, are clear-eyed, plain-spoken and easily understandable.

Moss explains in her introduction that at age twelve, during a Grade Seven school trip, she was “trapped in an elevator with a predator.” Further trauma occurred when a “well-meaning group of people” tried “to ‘pray’ the trauma out of [her],” which served only to exacerbate her PTSD: “religion became a trauma trigger,” she writes, and this collection is her “journey of growth and healing.” During therapy, “these poems started flying out of [her] soul.” As she continued working on her diagnosed c-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with a psychologist, the healing began. The tone and “frenzy” of the poems changed, and her “life started to make sense.”

The vulnerable and hopeful meditations are organized into three sections, “Trauma,” “Healing,” and “Living,” and of these, I found the poems in the “Trauma” section the strongest. Here the poet speaks to her inner child, and the first poem begins with the effective line: “And just like that my world crumbles.” She outlines the transformation in her personality after the elevator incident, and over the course of the poem she self-talks her way toward peace and health. “You are a powerful beautiful soul,” she writes, and “You can manage this life. Find the light.” In the next poem her anger is evident. Of her abuser, she writes “You suck the life out of kids.” She says: “The rats and the serpents/can feast on you,” and she calls him “Festering puss.”

Too many girls have to live with the devastating effects of childhood sexual abuse, and among the saddest outcomes is that they’re robbed of childhood joy. In “Dear 12-Year-Old Self,” Moss begins: “Dear little brown-eyed girl./I lost you” and assures her inner child that she is “A caged animal about to have a new life.” A happy life. Sensory pleasures—ie: “subtle shifts in the wind—represent newfound joy, and a mind’s “Full of little listens.”

Another consequence of trauma is difficulty with interpersonal relationships, and Moss examines this in poems that reveal that though she “push[es] people away,” she doesn’t “want anyone to go.” A kind of exorcism of negative thoughts, habits and relationships is unveiled. A twenty-year marriage is examined, a stalker addressed. A healthier woman emerges.

The puzzle of putting herself back together is a challenge, but the poet is “so close to putting it all together.” Through stillness, deep breathing, therapy and writing, Moss survives and is on her way to thriving. Once “a lifeless broken glass” that was “not capable of holding any form,” the poet learns that her “authentic self is a masterpiece,” and as readers, we can celebrate with her.

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

 

 

Three Book Reviews: The Wind and Amanda's Cello by Alison Lohans; The Glass Lodge by John Brady McDonald; and Restorig Relations Through Stories by Renae Watchman

“The Wind and Amanda’s Cello”

Written by Alison Lohans, Illustrated by Sarah Shortliffe

Published by Shadowpaw Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$23.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-15-7

  

It’s been such fun watching Regina author (and musician) Alison Lohans successfully focus her literary talents in so many different directions. The well-known multi-genre author has just released her 31^st book, and it’s a standout among the many children’s books that cross my desk each year.

Firstly, Lohans knows how to tell a story—whether it’s a novel for young adults, an early-reader chapter book or an illustrated children’s book like her recent release, The Wind and Amanda’s Cello—and it begins with language. In the opening spread of this colourful softcover, we read that “the wind grew restless.” Personification is effective in all writing, but perhaps particularly so when a writer’s engaging young readers. Sound is the most critical element in this book, and Lohans writes about it like she’s making it—a conductor directing an orchestra. We hear that life-like wind as it “whooshed by cars on the highway; it rattled gates and scattered old leaves on the sidewalk.” Note how the author uses specific details—another hallmark of quality writing.

The wind is indeed a powerful character in this story, and it finds its way into young Amanda’s cello, where it “whistled between the strings” and into “the dark inside of Amanda’s cello, where it hummed as Amanda played.” The girl immediately knows that “Something strange is going on,” and, as if also affected by the wind’s magic, her cat makes its own music as it “walked across the [piano] keys.” The girl and her pet play a sweet duet, but that doesn’t stop Amanda’s mother (or Amanda’s father) from telling Amanda that she mustn’t “forget [her] scales.” I admire the realism.

Others are also positively affected by Amanda’s humming cello—her orchestra mates, the paperboy, and neighbour Luke Garcia who “worked on his motorcycle in the driveway next door” and “forgot to turn on his radio when Amanda was playing her cello.” Time moves along in this delightful story, and when a baby girl joins the family, Amanda’s wind-swirled cello soothes the infant and helps her sleep.

As Amanda ages, music teachers insist that she’s outgrowing the cello and she tries several new ones, but, yikes, “not a single one of them hummed.”

The book’s also a treasure because of the lovely watercolour illustrations provided by Sarah Shortliffe. There’s a profound difference between books commercially “illustrated” via computer (the wide-eyed characters in many of these books look the same) and books in which a human has drawn or painted unique images that truly reflect the author’s words and the emotions the story evokes. Shortliffe’s images reveal details, like the painted lines on the grey highway crawling through green hills, the fold on the sheet music the wind’s caressing on the piano, and the brown waves beneath Amanda’s toque as she plays for her baby sister.

This book succeeds for the reasons above, but also—and especially—because Lohans has managed to capture the love Amanda has for her cello, and the cello’s reciprocal love for her. 

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

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“The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition”

By John Brady McDonald

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$34.99  ISBN 9-781998-273119

 

As the name suggests, Shadowpaw Press Reprise is in the business of publishing previously-released books, often with edits and other improvements. The Glass Lodge: 20^th Anniversary Edition, a holds-no-punches poetry collection by Saskatchewan writer John Brady McDonald is one such book. First published in 2004 by Kegedonce Press, the Néhiyawak-Métis writer/artist/actor/musician/

historian—yes, he has a lot going on—from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the Mistawasis Nehiyawak has given the new hardcover edition a spit-shine, with “frank, fascinating insight[s]” into the poems’ angsty geneses, and several images of the initial handwritten pieces.        

McDonald’s been recognized for both his writing and artwork. His nonfiction book Carrying it Forward: ESSAYS FROM KISTAHPINÂNIHK garnered two Saskatchewan Books Awards in 2024, and his art’s been shown internationally. This multi-talented, Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal awardee (Saskatchewan), has had an extraordinarily diverse life, ranging from promiscuity and addiction issues to studying at England’s University of Cambridge and presenting his work in Australia.

 The book’s told chronologically in four parts—“Emergence,” “Eros,” “Kuskitew Peyesis” and “Renaissance,” and includes a “Denouement.” The poems reach back to McDonald’s difficult teenage years: the first poem in the book was written “in [his] math book, after [he] got in a fight with a white kid at school” and “snapped.” In the second piece, “Carpe,” he writes “My mind is a Latin Mass/chanting to be released” and, in the note below, he reveals that this short piece “was written in black marker on the liner notes of a Metallica cassette.”

Musical influences abound: Nirvana, Jim Morrison (McDonald’s “spiritual mentor”), and the poet’s favourite band, Guns N’ Roses. Of the latter, he confesses that their “music and lyrics were angry enough to serve as an equal frame against which to measure my own.”

This is not your grandmother’s poetry; violence is definitely a theme here, including gang violence. In “Colours,” about being “jumped-in” to a gang, we read  “Fists and feet pummel me/blood springs from my lips/again and again/The pain, the chain/across my back.” Writing authentically about street experiences like this would have an impact on young readers, and I’m not surprised that McDonald’s been a popular presenter. 

One of my favourite lines is “On this snow-covered concrete,/I ate from a garbage can/and am better for it” (“St. George of the Road Allowance”), and his description of a river as a “frozen snake of water” also stands out. 

The free verse poems are formally centred on the page. At one point the author admits that the poems in the “Eros” section “make [him] cringe in embarrassment” re: their romanticism, and we see this in melodramatic phrases like “my soul cries out,” and “Forbidden love is ours,” but good on McDonald for baring that young, love-tortured soul. I maintain that nobody has an “easy” life, but some suffer more than others. McDonald, fortunately, wrote his way toward a healthy lifestyle. “Words were my life-saving medium,” he says, and he proves through his “renaissance” that he is “so much more than a well-read Indian.”

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

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“Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh

Written by Renae Watchman

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$35.95  ISBN 9-781779-400031

   

The striking cover photo of Renae Watchman’s Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh features green aurora borealis dancing above the natural monolith Tsé Bit’a’í (the Rock with Wings), Watchman’s “maternal family’s hometown landmark” on Navajo Land near Shiprock, New Mexico. In her new book, the Diné author and associate professor in Indigenous Studies at McMaster University (Indigenous Literatures and Film) frequently addresses the “sentinal’s” cultural importance to the Diné (Navajo), and she discusses ties she discovered between the American Diné and the Dene people north of “the medicine line” in Canada.

The scholarly text examines traditional stories by Diné and Dene storytellers, writers and filmmakers and explains their significance. Watchman advocates for “the recognition of hane’ [story, narrative, wisdom] in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded) to demonstrate “Hózhǫ́,” an important Diné precept that encompasses beauty, order, harmony, and the idea of striving for a balanced life. The tragic effect of COVID-19 on the Diné; ceremonies; beadwork; and “pretendians” are also some of what’s covered.

 Watchman introduces herself by acknowledging her Clan relations, as is the Diné custom. She explains that in 2011 she met members of the Tsuut’ina First Nation, a Dene community in Alberta, and, though the nations are now “geographically, culturally, politically and economically distinct,” through sharing stories, she learned of their “kinscapes.” The Dene she visited recommended she “include their stories in [her] book,” and she has done so in this literary journey that “encourage[s] reading for restoration,” and “demonstrate[s] the narrative arc of restoration and restorying of relations.” Again, out of respect on her “story-gathering journey,” she “only shares[s] oral stories that have been previously published.”   

The author’s chosen not to italicize Diné bizaad (the Diné language) words in her five-chapter book; it’s an act of “decolonization,” she writes, and quotes an online article which proports that italicizing every word apart from English “̒only serves to set them apart as exotic, deviant or as part of a particular colonizing anthropological project.’” (A sound argument, and the reason I’m also not italicizing other-than-English in this review.)

The photographic Shiprock pinnacle has appeared in “at least twenty-eight documentaries and motion pictures,” Watchman writes, including a Disney feature film, John Carter. The scholarly writer discusses both non-Diné and Diné productions shot in the area, and argues that “non-Diné storytelling erases, replaces, and displaces.” When the Tsé Bit’a’í image is appropriated for items like “postcards … billboards, mastheads, and coffee mugs,” and used in films without Diné context, this “ironically contributes to her epistemic erasure.”

Watchman says it’s not the presence of Indigenous actors in a film that deems it Indigenous, rather  “indigenous agency as a creative behind the camera” make it so. I appreciated her analyses of Diné filmmaker Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest and Diné Larry Blackhorse Lowe’s 5^th World, and while I wasn’t able to access the full films, I found scenes and interviews via Youtube that heightened my appreciation for both the films and for Watchman’s well-researched and well-written treatise.

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

 

 

Three Book Reviews: The Medicine Chest: A Physician's Journey Towards Reconciliation by Jarol Boan; The Door at the End of Everything by Lynda Monahan; and What If You Could? by Lynne Harley, Art by Kiram Akram

“The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliation”

By Jarol Boan

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$29.95  ISBN 9-780889-779730

   

I was expecting an academic text when I received The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliation by Regina-raised-and-returned-to physician and educator, Dr. Jarol Boan, but immediately discovered there’s nothing dull about this engaging, well-researched and important book. In fact, I flew through it.

Boan, an internist who spent twenty years practising and teaching in the US, returned home in 2011—at fifty-seven—to find “Indigenous people played a different role in Saskatchewan’s affairs than they once had,” and this book documents her poignant experiences while treating Indigenous patients within Saskatchewan’s health care system from 2011 to the present. Her accounts are balanced between compelling anecdotes about patients in Regina and on reserves in the Touchwood Hills, other healthcare workers, the system (ie: fee-for-service) and politics; and medical history (ie: the TB epidemic), research and statistics.

A few details about Boan’s own personal history (ie: challenging divorce and custody battle) are included, but the true focus concerns the inequities, oppression and racism inherent in the Canadian health care system. Moreover, she explains how she and a few others in the healthcare field, both settlers and Indigenous, are using a “team approach” to address “profound inequalities and injustice” through a program called “Wellness Wheel.” The name’s adapted from Medicine Wheel, “to show our desire to enhance every dimension of the human experience.” Although the logistics of delivering this program—with limited resources, personnel and physical spaces, plus inter-agency/jurisdictional confusion—have been a challenge since its inception in 2016, it boasts countless victories, and it's growing.

The book begins: “Imagine an Elder tells me a story.” The opening chapter then delves into the legend behind Turtle Island (North America); turns to the 1876 negotiation between Chief Ahtahkakoop and Commissioner Alexander Morris—the former requested a “medicine chest” for his people, so they’d receive “the same medical care the white settlers had;” returns to the present, with Boan writing the Elder a prescription for joint pain; explains the drug’s connection to willows; and finishes with Boan’s reflection that she’s “one of the keepers of the medicine chest,” which, for Indigenous people, “has often been empty or filled with horrors.”

Trust’s hard-won, but whether visiting patients on reserve or treating society’s most vulnerable at Regina General Hospital—sometimes the ER’s so busy there’s “no time to pee”—listening is the first step. She confesses to her own occasional “assumptions,” ie: being surprised that an unhomed, Indigenous ER arrival was reading Hemingway and Steinback, and he “grew up in Hollywood and went to a school in LA.” She cites Gordon Tootoosis, Allen Sapp, and Maria Campbell as Indigenous Saskatchewan talents who’ve shown “strength and resilience” to succeed, despite unjust treaties and prejudice.

Though “the road to reconciliation is messy” and “we need a reorganization of our health care system,” through “two-eyed seeing,” paying attention to “social determinants of health,” and using her settler-class power “for advocacy,” Roan’s working diligently and empathetically with “her Indigenous partners for a greater good.”  This book’s earned my highest recommendations.

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

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“The Door at the End of Everything”

By Lynda Monahan

Published by Shadowpaw Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99  ISBN 9-781998-273133

 

The metaphorical title of Lynda Monahan’s fifth poetry collection, The Door at the End of Everything, is lifted from her long, forthright poem of the same name. The piece is set in a mental health facility, and several of these saturnine new poems—particularly those in the book’s middle section, “Saying the Unsayable Things”—are based on the veteran SK writer, editor and workshop facilitator’s experiences as writer-in-residence at the Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert. I’d bet my snow boots that her facilitation of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Writing For Your Life group, and, much more intimately, personal and familial experience, also inspired these thoughtful poems.  

As Monahan writes, “there is poetry everywhere,” and bravo to her: she surely finds it. It’s on tattooed wrists that cover scars, the bulimic who “gorges even on [drinking water]”, and in the patient treated with ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) who says he “returned home/like the dry cleaning/my mind pressed flat/as a pair of black dress paints”. These are plainspoken, powerful poems that speak to truth, hope and resilience, even when a donated coat (“buttons long since missing”) is “the closest damn thing” a man experiences “to anything [he’d] call a home.” There’s much empathy for the unhomed and residential school survivors.

The versatile writer’s free verse also delivers images of domesticity, ie: “laundry/heaped like a small unscalable mountain,” and there’s “an anarchy of wet towers and dirty shirts,” plus family poems. Like most of us, Monahan often writes from experience, and some of her most powerful poems concern a difficult father who was “bigger than all our lives.” She notes that joys seems easier for some people—like her sister—who finds it “in the wild asters at the road’s edge/on the filigreed wings of dragonflies.” For others, the “white lace of baby’s breath in ditches” is not enough. Sadness, loneliness, alienation and invisibility … these are the stones in this collection’s river, and sadness, especially, doesn’t reveal “the way stars sparkle up the sky/or when clouds are doing something to the moon.”

I appreciate how Monahan uses fire, the colour blue, food, and even the forest to manifest mood in her carefully-crafted work. Things decay and relationships stale. In “Poor Mary,” apples and peaches rot in “soggy cardboard boxes,” and, when visiting, the poet writes of “fruit lies flitting around our heads/like miniature Tinkerbells.” What a brilliant simile. The forest is seen both as sanctuary (“here where fox glimmers/in the purple shadowed snow/I know myself best) and, as in the poem “Clear Cut,” a “place of fractured branches/and broken spirit and loneliness.”

The book’s third and final section is rainbow-like. In “These Little Things That Save Us,” we find “a nest of newborn starlings” and “bits of beach glass.” Monahan knows and eloquently writes about the way the simplest things—skin “perfumed with wood smoke”—sometimes make everything better.

This new collection brims with poems that anyone with a beating heart must feel in the pit of their stomach. Bravo, Lynda Monahan.

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

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“What If You Could?”

By Lynne Harley, Art by Kiram Akram

Published by Lynne Harley-Mastery for Life Coaching & Consulting

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.99 ISBN: 978-1-77-821860-6

 

In my many years as a reviewer, I’ve noted that some of the best children’s stories are penned by those who bring professional knowledge—garnered after a career in a non-writing profession—to the page, and Lynne Harley’s a case in point. After four decades as a social worker and transformational life coach, the Camrose, AB writer has now published her first children’s book, What If you Could?, and I’m certain any youngsters who find this colourful softcover in their hands will feel just as empowered to dream big as the story’s green caterpillar does.

The story, told in rhyming verse, features a large-eyed caterpillar who is “Feeling bored” as he’s “munching and crunching” through leaves. On one “grey and gloomy day,” said caterpillar hears his inner voice, which suggests it’s time to turn over a new leaf (so to speak), and find “something new” in his life. Firstly, he begins observing the flora and fauna: “He saw squirrels, chattering noisily/playing a game of hide and seek,/and hungry baby robins gobbling/worms from their mother’s beak.” Even the wildflowers, as they “swayed freely in the breeze,”   seemed to be enjoying life more than him. The contrast between the caterpillar’s days—which are “glum and dull as rain”—and the creatures around him spurs the hero into action. “A voice as warm as sunshine” compels the caterpillar to “̒Dream Big!” and “̒Let [his] imagination run free.’”

It's a true thing that sometimes we need to be given permission to “dream big,” even if that permission comes from within. If an adult’s reading the story aloud, this might be a spot to ask listeners what they might wish to see or accomplish in their lifetime. The caterpillar imagines “travelling all around the world,” and realizes he “would love to fly.” If he had colourful wings, he could “drink the sweet, sweet nectar/of flowers kissed by morning dew,” and “people would point and admire” him. But is it all a dream?

The book also features the flipside voice, the one that “was cold and quite mean,” and encouraged the caterpillar to keep the boring status quo. “̒Who do you think you are?’” it harangues. After a “long and gloomy day,” the seesaw between hope and doubt plagues the cartoon-like creature, but in his dreams he does indeed soar—and is becoming a cocoon. Then “magically, one morning,” you know who “flew free” as a smiling, white-gloved, yellow and red butterfly, soaring over the green landscape.

The power of positive thinking is real, and sometimes we all—regardless of age—need to hear this: “̒Believe in your dreams, because I believe in you.’”

This story is also about transformation. Change can be difficult, but again, it’s definitely helpful when we’re able to silence the negative inner voice and embrace the one that says: Yes you can!

I’ll happily share this book with my seven-year-old neighbour, and as I do I’ll remind myself that even at my great age, it’s never too late to dream big.

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

 

 

Two Book Reviews: The Genius Hour Project by Leanne Shirtliffe, and The Time for Peace is Now by Marion Mutala, Illustrations by Kate Hodgson, Calligraphy by A. E. Matheson

“The Genius Hour Project”

By Leanne Shirtliffe

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95 ISBN 9781771872577 

 

As a sexagenarian, I never imagined I’d so enjoy a novel featuring an eleven-year-old protagonist, but here’s the thing: good literature is good literature, and Leanne Shirtliffe’s juvenile novel, The Genius Hour Project, certainly fits the bill. This engaging and realistic book was a distinct pleasure to read, with compelling characters and interesting relationship dynamics, and a few serious subplots (divorce, depression) that elevate it leagues above many middle-grade novels. It’s refreshing to read a story for this age group that doesn’t rely on slapstick humour or silly hijinks—the cast may be young, but they’re mature and intelligent.

Shirtliffe’s a longtime educator, a school counsellor and parent who writes credibly about the school and home life of Francine (aka Frazzy), a self-deprecating only child and audiophile with a passion for vintage vinyl albums like The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Frazzy’s mother is the busy mayor of “Riverdale,” and her dad stays at home, upcycles lampshades and sells items at flea markets—he also suffers from depression. The Calgary author’s deft treatment of how this manifests for Dad and how his family and friends deal with it demonstrate literary skill and empathy. Although Frazzy occasionally thinks her family’s “the Weirdersons,” her best friend reminds her that “̒At least [her] parents are happy together.’” 

The novel delivers insight into contemporary education practices, ie: Frazzy’s teacher, Ms. Zalia, set up her classroom with “flexible seating options”—one can “bounce on an exercise ball instead of wiggle on a chair,” or choose the “Stand-Up,” “Independent,” “Pillow” or “Yoga Station” to work at. The book begins in September, with the Grade Six students—witty Frazzy; her best friend, Mel, a hockey captain; Frazzy’s Farzi-speaking crush, Ebrahim; and bothersome Jake—embarking on something called a Genius Hour Project: a student-driven research project in which students select, research, create and publicly share a project they work on all year.

Grade Six is “supposed to be [Frazzy’s] year for flying under the radar, for being normal, for not embarrassing [herself],” and to that end, she selects a project she thinks won’t cause much of a stir—genius female politicians, including her mother. But Frazzy’s heart’s not in it: music is her passion. Even Ebrahim, for whom she’s making a Spotify playlist, understands that “music is [her] genius.”   Should she be true to herself and surreptitiously change projects midway through the year?

Secondary characters have some of the best lines in this book, ie: schoolmate Lyza, who rocked an appearance on the show “The Next Big Voice,” says “̒Music is a gateway to feelings we don’t know we have.’” Jake (of the incessant teasing) tells Frazzy that “̒This world has no place for people like us.’”  Also noteworthy are all the nods to the here-and-now, ie: at the flea market, “People …. stream in like they’re squeezing through the doors of Best Buy on Black Friday,” and Youtube’s mentioned a few times.

Splendid on all levels—and a satisfying ending—The Genius Hour Project  deserves a gold star.    

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

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 “The Time for Peace is Now”

Written by Marion Mutala, Illustrations by Kate Hodgson, Calligraphy by A. E. Matheson

Published by Millenium Marketing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.99  ISBN 978-1-7390670-5-2

 

Prolific and award-winning Saskatoon writer Marion Mutala now has twenty titles to her credit—including the acclaimed children’s series Baba’s Babushka, poetry and a cookbook—and, during these globally turbulent times, she’s aptly re-released her 2015 chapbook The Time for Peace is Now. The book’s minimally illustrated (a blue dove with a leafed olive branch appears on the cover and throughout the book) by Kate Hodgson, with lovely calligraphy by A. E. Matheson.

Mutala has a history of promoting peace, love and equality in her books, and in the dedication for this small book she considers “World Peace,” and writes: “In the 21^st century, society needs to teach children to find ways to solve problems peacefully. I ask myself ‘What am I doing today to promote peace?’” I would say the former longtime educator is doing much more than most with the publication of this title, inspired, she says “by the motto of Hazrat Mirza Nasir Ahmad Khalifatul Masih III: ‘Love of all, hatred for none.’”

Each page is a prayer in itself, beginning and ending with the phrase: “The time for peace is now; now is the time for peace.” Between these phrases we read about the various people who desire peace, ie: “Nurses heal for it. Doctors cure for it. Hospitals nurture it”. Mutala’s passionate about the arts, and this comes across in the text: “Singers vocalize it. Musicians perform it. Dancers dance it. Writers craft it. Painters illustrate it. Actors entertain it. Conductors direct it.” She writes that even flowers, birds, animals, the sun, mountains, the moon and stars crave peace—as so do people from various cultures around the world.

I particularly enjoyed the naming of Creators that appears on “Paix 12” of the 17- page chapbook. From those we’re familiar with, ie: “Buddha, Allah, and Jehovah” to “Gitche Manitou,” “Tenri-O-no-Mikoto” and “Divine Mother and Master of All Things in the Universe”. In her brief Author’s Note, Mutala explains “There are 104 different names of Gods listed on [a] world religions website,” and the final four pages of the book includes each of these in a colourful calligraphic font.

The Time for Peace is Now was initially released by Happy Leopard Chapbooks as a limited edition, handmade chapbook, with all proceeds going to the charity NASHI, “a Saskatoon-based organization dedicated to addressing human trafficking, particularly in Ukraine.” In a 2015 Saskatoon StarPhoenix interview, Mutala said: “When I first wrote the Peace book, I didn’t know if it was going to be a story or a poem … Now I reckon it’s my prayer for peace.”

Whether one’s Creator is “Great Interconnectedness,” “Infinite Mystery,” “The Evolutionary Absolute,” “God,” or any other deity, Mutala believes that love is at the basis of all faith. This tiny, inclusive book tenderly raises awareness about the imminent universal need and desire for peace, and good on Mutala for flying the peace flag in this unique way.

Her twentieth book, A Rainbow Makes A Promise, was released in the summer of 2024.

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

 

Three Book Reviews: Ghost Hotel by Arthur Slade; Invasion of the I.Q. Snatchers by Arthur Slade; and Realia by Michael Trussler

“Ghost Hotel”

By Arthur Slade

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-02-7

Ghost Hotel, the 2^nd novel in prolific writer Arthur Slade’s Canadian Chills Series, is a spooky send-up for young readers and—abracadabra—it’s just been re-released. If you’re already a Slade fan, you may remember Ghost Hotel. First published in 2004, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has resurrected it … and lucky you if you have yet to discover it. The tone of this supernatural, middle years’ mystery—featuring junior detective friends “Wart” and Cindy—is light-hearted. Though the youthful leads are wise-crackers and the story’s a hoot, the author’s a serious writer with mad skills: you don’t have over thirty novels published if you’re a dabbler.

Disclaimer: I know Arthur Slade. Back in the day, we wrote radio commercials in the same office. I read his first novel, Draugr, when it was still in manuscript form. I attended his wedding. As lovely as these things may be, they don’t matter as far as this review goes, for even if I was inclined to bolster a book on account of a long friendship, there’s no need to here: Slade’s books consistently win awards and fly off the shelves because he is simply a damn good writer. The Saskatoon author earned a Governor General’s Award for his novel Dust, and his name frequently appears on SK Book Award lists.

Ghost Hotel is a Saskatoon-based story concerning Archie (“dressed in a nerdy grey suit-and-tie outfit and a bowler hat that made him look like a mini-version of Charlie Chaplin”), a young ghost who appears to novice sleuths Wart (CEO of the Walter Biggar Bronson Ghost Detective and Time Travel Agency) and his sidekick, Cindy, at Victoria School, post-badminton match. Wart has a few special possessions that would make him the envy of any grade seven student, including a watch that glows “whenever a supernatural presence comes near,” and a cellphone that works even during time travel episodes. Wart comes by his curiosity honestly: his parents are “both mad scientists”. His father suffers from “alienphobia” and wears a tinfoil hat, and his mom, with a PhD in “psychic and supernatural sciences,” has been phobic about vampires “ever since she was attacked by Count Spokula” while the family was on holiday in Transylvania. Why Transylvania? “Cheap flights,” Wart explains.

Kids must love this book. It’s original, funny (the asides are terrific), fast-moving,  and—the boy-ghost that leads Wart and Cindy to a 1936-version of the Delta Bessborough aside—Slade’s handling of language and characters is top-notch. The adults are wonderfully weird. There’s a magician whose face is “the colour and texture of mottled Swiss cheese;” a school principal obsessed with toy trains; and a “batty” librarian insists that “every child should read [The Wizard of Oz]”.

Slade takes a self-talking ventriloquist’s dummy (always frightening), loads of “ghost goo,” a time-travelling elevator, and a family’s untimely death in the wintery South Saskatchewan and puts them all—and much more—in the path of two adolescent detectives who are ready to kick some derriere.

Ghost Hotel: hard yes.        

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

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“Invasion of the I.Q. Snatchers”

By Arthur Slade

Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.99  ISBN 978-1-998273-04-1

The Canadian Chills Series is a trifecta of amusing middle-grade novels created by Saskatoon’s award-winning Arthur Slade, and I’ve just devoured the Nanaimo Bar-themed Invasion of the I.Q. Snatchers, the third book in the series. As with his earlier books, Slade’s chosen two clever and curious friends—Gordon Whillickers and Sophia Morrison—to team up against a threatening force, and futuristic technology, an amiable Sasquatch, and bizarrely-behaving adults are part of the package. It’s a recipe that works as well as combining custard, a chocolate ganache topping, and a coconut crumb base.    

Coastal Nanaimo’s the setting for Slade’s slightly clumsy and seriously science-minded pair. The novel begins thus: “A long, hairy arm reached through my open window and pounded around the top of my desk”. Meet Cheryl, a pink-fingernailed Sasquatch. She’s after the Nanaimo bars someone’s left on the Whillickers’ doorstep, and Gordon has yet to sample. His sassy talking parrot, Archimedes—who’s been listening to “ornithopetic IQ-raising songs” on an MP3 player (this reprinted book initially hit shelves in 2007) and is velcro-strapped into a tiny helmet with a bird cam—takes an investigative flight over Nanaimo’s rooftops and zeroes in on “a pan full of Nanaimo bars, shooting along the sidewalk all on its own”. Say what? In a cliff-hanging line at the end of the third (characteristically) short chapter, Gordon knows “things [are] about to get extremely and utterly weird”. 

It seems all of Nanaimo’s received the addictive Nanaimo bars on their doorsteps, along with a compliment: confidant Sophia’s reads “To the smartest girl in Nanaimo;” insert boy for girl, and voilà—Gordon’s note. The kids’ parents haven’t been immune, and after consuming the treats, they’re acting positively Stepfordian: the women wear curlers and are obsessed with vacuuming and watching Coronation Street; the men wear suits and ties, Brylcreem their hair, and watch Front Page Challenge. “All of Nanaimo has gone completely bananas,” Sophia says.

Can the kids discover who is turning the Nanaimoites into zombies? Is nanotechnology involved? Can Archie help? Who are the Denebians? And what about that “BHM” (Big Hairy Monster)?

As with Book 2 in this entertaining series, Slade’s had a load of fun with the book’s adults. Gordon’s dad’s an architect who’d “grown a goatee because he thought it would make him look younger,” and Sophia’s dad is a writer who “was never really working but spent most of his time with a cloudy, deep-thought look on his face”.

Slade’s sense of humour is matched by his wild imagination: Cheryl lives on Newcastle Island, and Gordon wonders if she’s “one of those hippie types who never shaves. That would explain the hairy arms”. The story’s interspersed with silly Sasquatch lore, Nanaimo history and landmarks (ie: the Bastion), and Slade’s typical veneration for libraries and librarians.

If zingers like “It turns out that Sasquatches aren’t the greatest drivers in the world” would delight a young person you know, do check out this romp of a book—and Slade’s multiple other titles—at arthurslade.com.   

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

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“Realia”

By Michael Trussler

Published by Radiant Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$20.00  ISBN 9-781998-926039

   

As a longtime reviewer, I occasionally receive a book that I quickly discern will require disproportionate time and patience to digest. If, for example, I don’t know what the title means—ie: Realia, by award-winning Regina poet and nonfiction writer Michael Trussler—I can expect that Google’s going to be my friend. In a review of Trussler’s The History Forest, I suggested that reading his complex work is “like walking through a forest under the cape of night”. I’m still mostly in the dark with his latest work, Realia, but surmise that this very perplexity is indeed the point. Non-sequiturs, unfinished lines, seemingly random symbols, footnotes, bizarre juxtapositions (“History = milkshake duck”) … colouring outside the lines is this writer’s style, and he’s nothing if not consistent. I needed to take a deeper dive.   

Trussler’s bio reveals that he’s “neuro-divergent,” and there are references to “phobic anxiety,” “OCD,” and “the psych ward [he] spent a week in downtown”. As I toddled through the pieces—frequently stopping to research names and words—and realized that much of what the poet questions is actually reality, I began to fall under the work’s strange spell and stopped looking for logical connections I might report on, like his litany of technological and cinematic references: microphones, voice-over, documentary, copying machine, TV remote, Zoom, mise en scène, database, televisions, film camera, Netflix, smart phones, iPhone, and various films and actors. Or his connection to colours: “The orange-red eyes of oystercatchers”.  

In a formidable poem titled “A Grammar of Spontaneity,” Trussler writes:

 

     a bit sketchy but for starters there’s

     been a lot of illness in the Family, the one

     real job is

 

     to keep, is to keep, is to

     avoid ending

 

     up like your father

 

There are quotes—sometimes mid-poem—from a variety of sources (from Hari Kunzru to Rachel Carson to excerpts from the Journal of Katherine Mansfield), but most of the most effective lines are Trussler’s own:

                                                        the moment in which the patient

remembers the mother-of-pearl cliffs of sunlight

                                                        asleep on a grandmother’s

                                                        bathroom floor—

 

(C.D. Wright quoting another, unnamed poet’s assertion that “̒Poetry is speech by someone who is in trouble,’” is also stellar.)

It’s about the journey, here, not the destination. These pieces (the book includes prose essays) never feign to make logical sense: the anxiousness that’s often part and parcel of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is represented in this collection. That Trussler, through these pieces, can make a non-OCD reader feel the experience of a busy and often fearful mind—struggling to ascertain the difference between “common” reality and one’s own reality—is testament to his talent and the works' power. 

“Realia,” by the by, has multiple meanings, but most relevant here is this Merriam-Webster adaptation: “̒Realia’ is also sometimes used philosophically to distinguish real things from the theories about them”. Also of note is literary/cultural critic and writer Lauren Berlant’s insightful, book-opening quote: “How does someone stay attached to life while repudiating the world of bad objects?” This question hangs in the air. 

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