Three New Reviews: Sally Meadows, Rachel Wyatt, Deana J. Driver

“The Two Trees”

Written by Sally Meadows, Illustrated by Trudi Olfert

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.95 ISBN 978-1-927756-43-0

 

     I love receiving new books to review, but sometimes I can’t get to them immediately. Before I had a chance to dive into The Two Trees, a children’s book by Saskatoon writer\illustrator team Sally Meadows and Trudi Olfert, myvisiting friend, Flo, picked the book off my kitchen counter and read it.

     “What did you think?” I asked.

     “Loved it,” Flo said. “It brought tears to my eyes.”

     Any children’s story that can move an adult to tears is one I don’t want to wait another moment to read. I took the softcover book to my deck and in the few minutes it took to engage with the sensitively-written and pastel-illustrated story – about the relationship between two brothers, and the younger’s difficulty with the elder’s inability to socially interact “normally” both at home and school – I too, experienced the proverbial lump-in-throat that signifies an emotional connection’s been made.

     “Wow,” I said, “what a strong metaphor for ‘otherness’”.

     “I know,” Flo said. “And that word at the end, ‘almost’ … that’s what got me.”

     This easy-to-read story begins with the side-by-side planting of two small evergreens by the young narrator, Jaxon. “One was for me. One was for my older brother,” Jaxon says. But brother Syd is nonplussed when asked about the tree, or most anything else. He is much more interested in sharing his gemstones, for example, and he can name them all. Time and again, Syd fails to interact with his family, neighbours and classmates. He is completely absorbed in his own world – a world which includes talking to himself, tearing paper “into tiny bits,” and having temper tantrums - and thus is ostracized by other children. Eventually even Jaxon stops trying to connect, opting instead to play with those who “played back”.

     Syd lives with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder, and kudos to Meadows for bringing this issue to light in a non-syrupy, full-circle story that will appeal to all ages. In her Author’s Note, Meadows - a singer\songwriter, educator and speaker, as well as a writer - explains that her book is “intended to raise awareness about the challenges of having an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) child … and to be a springboard for important discussions with ASD families, educators, students, and the general public.”

     The book’s an excellent springboard indeed, complete with “Questions for Readers” and a “Recommended Reading List,” and I hope it reaches a broad audience, as it concerns one quality that can actually change societies. I’m talking about compassion, folks.

     This is a story to spread and discuss. And Flo was right about that word, ‘almost’. I encourage you to buy the book, and find out why.           

 

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

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“Street Symphony”

Written by Rachel Wyatt

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$18.95 ISBN 9-781550-506181

 

     Rachel Wyatt’s short story collection, Street Symphony, opens with an epigraph from Emily Dickinson: “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –That perches in the soul-”. The epigraph is wisely chosen; in several of the 17 stories the protagonists are unhappy, and for good reason -  job losses, accidents, partners’ deaths – and thus hope for a brighter tomorrow is what they cling to. These are characters for whom “The universe had tilted.”

     There’s Jason, in the story “Salvage,” who lost his wife in a car accident after they’d had a fight about her desire to get a pet fish. In the aftermath of her death Jason empties much of his furniture into a dumpster, and accidently “bakes” some of his wife’s photographs in the oven with the lasagna. “But he sat on the floor and ate it as a penance, charred paper and all. He knew now that he had to suffer in order for the world to tilt back to its proper axis.” The story is a powerful examination of grief, which can certainly defy logic, and it’s also representative of how Wyatt laces her serious and often bizarre-situation stories with humour.

     In “Pandora’s Egg,” poor Dan, a soldier who’d served in Afghanistan, returns home with a man’s body and a child’s mind. His doctors recommend “creative work” to help aid his recovery, so he makes birdhouses. Wyatt writes that he “watched endless game shows in the afternoons and slept like a child in the spare room on a nest he’d made from blankets and pillows” while his wife, Erin, struggles with their new reality.

     I found Maura, the main character in “Falling Woman,” especially credible. The woman observes another woman falling – or perhaps being pushed – off a rooftop to her death, and Maura both suppresses the urge to “Facebook” the event (and take a “selfie” with the corpse), and lets the tragedy consume her to the point of paranoia.

     Eve from “It’s Christmas, Eve,” is a widow who lies to concerned family and friends about having plans for Christmas. What they don’t know is that Eve’s husband had been unfaithful to her, a fact she did not learn until after his death. “Posthumous betrayal could eat up your heart and soul and leave no place for life,” according to her counsellor.    

     The dark matter of these stories could make for an overly heavy book if it weren’t for Wyatt’s well-placed humour, like these lines regarding the writing course that seniors Roland and Ella enrolled in: “They spent an hour going over his little attempt at narrative and by the time they were done he was exhausted and wondered why he’d sign up for this form of torture” and “When he said goodbye, he’d hugged her and whispered into her hearing aid, ‘Thank you very much.”

     Wyatt has published numerous books and has had stage plays produced in Canada, the US and the UK. Dialogue is her strong point: to hear these characters talking is sheer entertainment.

      

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

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“Cream Money: Stories of Prairie People”

Compiled and edited by Deana J. Driver

Published by DriverWorks

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$14.95 ISBN 978-192757019-7

 

 

     I didn’t expect this. While reading Cream Money: Stories of Prairie People, I stopped several times and thought: we have no idea. “We” being anyone who did not live in rural SK in the early to mid-1900s, when even children worked hard to ensure that life ran smoothly on the farm. It was the era of large families and tight budgets, of rolling up one’s sleeves before the school bus even arrived, and of smothering foods of all kind in rich, delicious, straight-from-the-cow cream.

     Editor Deana J. Driver has collected 29 short and interesting anecdotes (plus several black and white photographs) from Saskatchewanians - from Abbey to Yorkton - who well recall how hard they worked and how different life was in earlier times, when cream was regularly sold to creameries. 

     It was not uncommon for farmers of that time to own at least one dairy cow, and the much-needed funds earned selling cream kept many families financially afloat during lean times. Within these pages we learn about specific animals, milking techniques, the cream-separating process and equipment used, the storing and transport of this precious cream, what earnings were used for, the various ways in which cream (and skim milk) were used, and about familial and community relationships.

     There are commonalities, ie: no one expressed joy at washing the separating discs, and several writers fondly remembered some of the candies they were treated with: Cracker Jacks, Lucky Elephant popcorn, Mojos, and jawbreakers (three for a penny). More than one writer expressed gratitude at receiving a dairy cow(s) as a wedding gift. Having a mouse fall into the cream can - or learning your cow got into stinkweed and cream quality was diminished- was also commonly bemoaned.

     Bryce Burnett, from Swift Current, presented his reminiscence in the form of a an ode called “Cream Can”: “At the country dance it served as a stool for the fiddler of the band,\Or was beat upon its bottom by the sticks of a drummer’s hand.” Weyburn writer Jean F. Fahlman poetically begins: “Thick farm cream ran through rural life, a river of richness and financial survival.” I chuckled about her Jersey cow that had learned to “[suck] herself dry before milking time.”

     This is an important book, both historically and culturally, as these plain-spoken reminiscences preserve the stories regarding a way of life that is now decades behind us. In many ways Cream Money is a cousin to “community books,” where people also include what family members got up to and where they are now, family photos, and even journal entries.

     Leroy-born Jerry Holfeld sums the experience up nicely: “In my young mind [dairy farming] seemed time-consuming and inconvenient when compared to the profit in the whole enterprise but in thinking about it now, it was rich in regards to the memories and the thinking process … in establishing values and character based on love … obedience … and honest work …”.

     Yes, a rich time. Rich as cream.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: The New Wascana Anthology: Poetry, Short Fiction, and Critical Prose (ed. Medrie Purdham and Michael Trussler)

“The New Wascana Anthology: Poetry, Fiction, and Critical Prose”

Edited by Medrie Purdham and Michael Trussler

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$49.95  ISBN 978-0-88977

 

     I've said it before: the beauty of an anthology – and particularly a multi-genre example, like the The New Wascana Anthology, is that readers can sample from a veritable banquet of hand-picked work. This book represents a “best of” combination of two earlier “Wascana” anthologies (poetry and short fiction), plus other important and entertaining work. Editors Merie Purdham and Michael Trussler’s intent was “to preserve the strengths of the earlier anthologies” and “add a variety of new selections to make a textbook that would be especially amenable to the twenty-first-century classroom.”     

     Within these 551 pages you’ll discover popular works from the canon (American, British, and Canadian) sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with pieces by contemporary Canadians, including many of Saskatchewan’s finest (current or former residents), including Lorna Crozier, Patrick Lane, Gerald Hill, Karen Solie, and newcomer Cassidy McFadzean, b. 1989. You may find yourself remembering poetic lines from Shakespeare, Wordsworth or Dickinson, and then be pleased to shake the metaphorical hand of contemporary short story writers like Eden Robinson, Dianne Warren, Rohinton Mistry, Alexander MacLeod (his “Miracle Mile” is placed next to his father Alistair’s Macleod’s evocative east coast tale “The Boat”), and Richard Ford.

      Many will be familiar with Frost’s line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” or Christopher Marlowe’s “Come live with me, and be my love”. To read these again and recall the sentiment and lilt of the words was, for me, a touchstone, connecting me to the first time I read these poems in university classes. I’m all for nostalgia, but what excited much more was to be introduced to writers I’d known of but not yet read.

     The aforementioned Alexander MacLeod delivers a compelling story about the stress suffered by professional runners. The narrator muses: “If I ever have a kid, I think I’ll them [sic] participate in the grade-school track meets when they’re little, but that’s it.” He continues: “ … because it never gets better than that.” I adore the long, visceral paragraph this is pulled from, which ends thus: “Maybe the newspaper takes a picture, you and the red-haired girl, standing on the top step of a plywood podium, holding all your first-place ribbons in the middle of a weedy field while all the dandelions are blowing their fuzzy heads off.” Yes!

      Sherman Alexie’s “The Approximate Size of My Favourite Tumour” was hilarious, sad, and relatable, and had me racing to my computer to find out more about this award-winning Seattle writer. This is the true beauty of anthologies: they introduce.

      The critical prose section includes five entries, most with an ecological bent. Trevor Herriot discusses Sprague’s pipits and chestnut-collared longspurs, and Barbara Kingsolver beachcombs with a daughter while meditating on our misdirected hunger “to possess all things bright and beautiful.”

     One certainly needn’t be a student to appreciate this eclectic collection.

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

 

 

Two Book Reviews: Grayson and Randal Rogers \ Christine Ramsay

“Ghost Most Foul”

by Patti Grayson

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$10.95  ISBN 9-781550-506143

     I was able to devote almost unbroken hours to reading Ghost Most Foul by Manitoba writer Patti Grayson, and good thing: I was so swept up in this compelling juvenile novel I wanted to charge through it like an athlete storms through opponents to win a game.

     For starters, Grayson really knows how to begin a book. The brief prologue hints of a plane crash, a basketball game, and a disruptive ghost. How’s that for disparate elements? My interest was immediately piqued.

     The credibly-voiced protagonist, Summer, is a rising basketball star at her junior high school. She’s perceptive, caring, and enjoys a pleasant home life, but we learn that Summer has also experienced pain. She was an “easy target” for jeering bullies in elementary school due to a “crazy growth spurt” which put her a head taller than some of her classmates. Summer loses sleep over hurtful comments like “‘How’s the weather up there?’” Like many who are bullied, she tries her best not to attract attention.

     Summer both idolizes her inspirational coach and feels a very strong connection to her, as we realize in this passage: “Sometimes when [Coach Nola] looked at me like that, it was as if she were running a scanner over the bar code of my deepest thoughts, because the next thing she’d say would be exactly what I needed to hear.” As the story opens, Coach Nola names Summer captain of the basketball team, much to the fellow athletes’ surprise, as another girl, Karmyn, seems a more obvious choice. It’s just before the Christmas holiday, and Coach Nola is set to enjoy a tropical vacation. Before going on the trip she will never return from – at least in human form – the coach leaves Summer with this enigmatic line: “‘It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you win the game.’” Throughout this fast-paced novel, Summer struggles to understand the meaning of this, and by the end of the story we learn its import.

      Grayson, who’s also published two adult novels, addresses bullying from a less common angle, as well. The new coach - Kamryn’s soon-to-be stepfather - bullies the team’s weakest and least-liked player, Dodie Direland. He twists her surname into “Dire Straits,” and Summer Widden is tagged “Withering Heights.” The humiliation is none-too-subtle, and cuts deeply.

     I appreciated that this author never let us forget that although she’s smart and articulate, the main character is still a 14-year-old girl. “‘Try playing basketball when you have your period and a ghost!’” Summer says.  

     Can Summer rise above her own aspirations to win the Provincials as a true leader? Can she figure out what the spirit of Coach Nola is trying to communicate by appearing only to her? And will Summer’s parents have her committed when their daughter starts exhibiting some very unSummer-like behavior?

     The book holds the answers, and I’m willing to bet this novel will hook(shot) you – oh, the desire to pun was too great – just as readily as it did me.     

 

 

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

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“Overlooking Saskatchewan: Minding the Gap”

Edited by Randal Rogers and Christine Ramsay

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$39.95  ISBN 9-780889-772922

 

     If you’ve been to London, England, you’ll be familiar with the phrase “Mind the Gap,” a caution to tube-users re: stepping between the train and the platform. Randal Rogers and Christine Ramsay, joint editors of Overlooking Saskatchewan: Minding the Gap - a collection of diverse essays about Saskatchewan as seen through cultural, artistic and historical lenses - suggest their title is derived from the province’s experience of being overlooked: a metaphorical gap “between Calgary and Winnipeg, to be looked down on, literally, as one flies over.”

     The editors aspired to collect work that would have broad appeal “as a contribution to knowledge about Saskatchewan culture that builds upon important research,” and address the various “gaps” that have existed - or continue to exist - within the province. I surmise that the editors also wished to address why Saskatchewan should not be overlooked. They aimed to “authentically address what it means to live and belong in this place,” and they pulled in some heavy hitters to make their arguments.

     Although the book’s intended for both general readers and scholars, it was definitely the less academic – and relatable – work that stood out for this reader. That said, I would argue that anyone who reads the contributions of these 20 mostly Saskatchewan writers and educators (many from the University of Regina) will be rewarded with fresh insight into how the province was shaped and how colourful its history has been … and education’s never a waste.

     The chapters are at times almost celebratory, ie: Charity Marsh’s “In the Middle of Nowhere”: Little Miss Higgins Sings the Blues in Nokomis, Saskatchewan;” Herman Mitchell’s gratitude in “Shaking Rattles in All Directions: Minding and Mending the Gap in Saskatchewan Science Education,” re: the ten years he spent at First Nations University; and Ken Layton-Brown’s conclusion, in “Home Away From Home: The Chinese Community in Early Saskatchewan,” that for the Chinese, “the ‘gap’ …has greatly narrowed if not actually closed.”

     Other pieces are more contentious. Ramsay takes on Regina’s “blind boosterism” promoted via the “I Love Regina!” campaign, which she concedes overlooks “truly visionary infrastructure projects”. She points to “the ghetto of North Central Regina” and “east-end box stores” as examples of “social divisions,” and cites the work of artists that address Regina’s darker legacies, including racism. James M. Pitsula explains how the Ku Klux Klan made inroads into 1920s Saskatchewan - when the province was third largest in Canada - and was influential in ousting the Liberals.

     A poetic piece by David Garneau (“Roadkill and the Space of the Ditch: An Artist’s Meditation”) was an original highlight, as was how the story of Darrell Night, the Aboriginal Saskatonian whom two police officers dropped outside the city in sub-zero temperatures, was addressed by his aunt, Joy Desjarlais, in her memoir vs. how two CBC journalists recorded the incident in their lauded book.      

      Saskatchewan’s a lively, accomplished, complex, and still-evolving province; it should not be overlooked. I’m grateful for the learning, and now, I’m downloading some Little Miss Higgins on YouTube.    

 

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

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEWS: Mark Abley's The Tongues of Earth; Robert Currie's The Days Run Away; and Sheena Simonson's Wascana Lake Through 4 Seasons

“The Tongues of Earth”

by Mark Abley

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 9-781550-506105

 

     A swallow’s “Cirque du Soleil”. Prairie fowl “swimming over their reflections”. The belief in “a

skinny horse\the colour of burnt almonds\frying in the noonday sun”.

     If you are a master poet and thus possess the literary chops, numerous book publications, and the

lifetime inquisitiveness that’s required, one day a publisher may honour you by releasing your “New

and Selected Poems.” This is the pinnacle, and I commend Coteau Books for recognizing that

Montreal poet, journalist, editor and non-fiction writer Mark Abley is worthy of such a title.

     The Tongues of Earth represents the best of what poetry can do: enlighten, entertain, empathize,

and lift us from our familiarity for moments at a time to offer a bird’s eye view – or an insider’s view

– into what it might be like to live a different life.   

     This is a large, sweeping map of a book. Abley transports us to disparate locations that include the

caves of prehistoric art in Chauvet, France; a cathedral in Girona, Spain; Montreal’s Chinese herbal

shops “with powdered\centipedes and gallbladders in jars;” and to Banff’s towering Mount Rundle,

where “the dust you arouse turns to smoke in the wind.”

      He knows well the tenor of his own impeccable voice, but he also wields ventriloquistic skills and

credibly represents a Guangzhou engineering student who, in a letter to his father, explains why his

passion for a waitress named Lo Chung is preempting his return home for the New Year festival; a

stuffed Labrador Duck in a museum; and the British writer and artist Samuel Palmer (d. 1881). I

admire the confidence of this. The daring.

     Some of these poems, like the imagistic and gentle “White on White,” are akin to landscape

painting. Word and image come together as brushstrokes: “I face a February morning by a lake\below

a gull at work in the delighted air\as the wet snow settles, flake by flake”.

      Direct and off-rhymes add to the book’s melodic tone, and several of Abley’s titles hint at his ear

for finding unusual music in unexpected places, ie: “”Egret Song,” “Oxford Sonata,” and “Small

Night Music”. In the latter, “a passing truck hurts the night\like a raw throat coughing.”

     The poems in this collection take several shapes, from easy-on-the-eyes couplets to the concrete

poem, “Into Thin Air,” about the extinct Imperial Woodpecker. In this piece, each of Abley’s three-

stanza’d sections are triangles: the long beginning lines progressively whittle down to a single word.

The shapes cleverly emulate the bird’s “pointed tail disappearing”. See how much fun poets have?

     There’s so much to commend in this collection, from an ode to a mother (that I will use in creative

writing classes) to the hilarity of “Vas Elegy,” a vasectomy poem. “The Not Quite Great” is an

evocative poem that represents those who are, well, not quite great. Another poem, “Goodsoil,”

consists entirely of SK place names.

     This is masterful writing. Friends, if you read only one book of poetry this year, The Tongues of

Earth, would be an excellent choice.   

      

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

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“The Days Run Away”

by Robert Currie

Published by Coteau Books

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$16.95  ISBN 9-781550-506082

     The cover image on Robert Currie’s new poetry collection, The Days Run Away, features two galloping horses in silhouette. This image and the book’s title are apt metaphors for the Regina writer’s latest, a strong body of mostly narrative pieces that document the passing of time and the poet’s people, including his close friend and fellow SK writer, Gary Hyland

     As Hyland (to whom the book is dedicated) was, Currie is a celebrated fixture on the SK-writing landscape. He is a founding member of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words and twice served as Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate. The longtime former teacher at Moose Jaw’s Central Collegiate knows his way around several genres; his oeuvre includes poetry, short story collections and novels.

     These poems are almost exclusively small stories told in “the people’s” language. They communicate. And they pack emotional punch. While reading, I kept imagining Currie delivering these diverse story-poems to a captive audience in a comfortable setting - where one’s allowed to have a beer, and fits right in wearing blue jeans. Folks would be nodding in recognition of shared experiences - attraction to a girl prettier than Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor; childhood eavesdropping on parental fighting; fishing with Len Thomson red and whites.

     Many of the poems begin with people, ie: “My cousin Lionel;” “His father;” “The boy who kneels on the dry hillside.” The latter, from the heart-wrenching poem “Hamid,” reveals a last line that feels like a punch. There’s no sentimentality, just straight ahead reporting of a cultural tragedy.   

     Within the first of the book’s five sections, two poems illustrate Currie’s imagination at full gallop. In “Beyond the Open Window,” a blocked writer’s disengaged arm flies out a window and erratically meanders down a street, essentially taking itself for a walk before it “shudders\and hoists itself upright, the hand\raising a thumb as if it might want\to hitchhike home to me.” In “Ghost Ship,” a creaking ship with a flaming-haired figurehead “sails through the fog that hangs\at five to nine in the schoolyard” above tag-playing children.

      Another highlight is the lyrical and almost prayer-like “Let Me”. It begins: “Let me leave\the Seventh Avenue pavement\and step among trees, sawdust\and wood chips a carpet\along the Wakamow Trail,\snow in dark hollows\where the sun never reaches.”     

     “What We Did” delivers on the nostalgia front. The poet recounts using clothespins to “clip cardboard strips to bicycle forks, our spokes howling” and animating stick-men hand-drawn “in the corners of Big Little Books.” He remembers a time when he’d completed “all the good pictures” in his colouring book. 

     The best writing makes us feel. I challenge anyone to read “Her Wedding Day” and not empathize with the mocked bride’s humiliation, or sense the unnamed man’s loneliness as he eats his microwaved meal alone and listens to the sounds his house makes in “The End of the Weekend.” 

     I agree with writer John Donlan, who provided what we call a “blurb” for the book’s back cover: “[Currie’s] stories belong to all of us.” 

    

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

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“Wascana Lake Through 4 Seasons”

by Sheena Simonson
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$34.95  ISBN 978-1-927756-40-9
 

     When I learned I was reviewing the hardcover photography book Wascana Lake Through 4 Seasons, I thought: Cool, after I’m done, it will make an excellent gift for someone. I’m a born-and-raised Saskatchewanian who now lives on Vancouver Island, and let me tell you, folks, Sheena Simonson’s wonderful publication is so evocative of my home province, this book’s not leaving home.

     Simonson’s compendium tells the story of a province - historically, socially, seasonally, recreationally, and flora and fauna-wise - not just the story of how Wascana Lake came to be, and how that urban body of water delights visitors year-round.

      In her afterword to this beautifully-designed and easy-to-read book, the author-photographer explains that some “328 kilometres of trail were covered in order to come up with the final 325 images”. The vibrant photos – some full page spreads, others collages - document Simonson’s “oasis,” and were shot in Wascana Centre between the Albert Memorial Bridge and the Broad Street Bridge.

     There are myriad photos of the behemoth Legislative Building – particularly impressive in the hoarfrosted winter scenes and when foregrounded by the lake at sunset - and its surrounding gardens. There are birds and blossoms, insects and art work, bridges and the bubbles that one usually doesn’t stop to look closely enough at to realize their individual beauty in the foam. Good photographs make us slow down.  

      What amazes is the diversity of plant and bird life in Wascana Park. What amazes is the amount of research that went into this book, and how useful a resource it will be for everything from tree and duck identification to learning fun facts, ie: black ash wood has acoustic properties and is used to make guitars, and American elm trees are used for making hockey sticks. What amazes is the effectiveness of single green branches against the backdrop blue of sky.  

     This book educates readers about clouds and the difference between fog and mist. We learn about photosynthesis, thunderstorms, and “leaf litter.” There’s much about how Wascana Lake was created out of necessity for water after the railroad was established in 1882, and the Queen City grew. A dam forged a reservoir, and the water was used for steam engines. It was also “hauled by wagon to water stock”.  

     James. F. Bryant, a former SK Minister of Public Works, had the foresight to “deepen the lake and widen the Albert Street Bridge”. In 1931 “2107 people excavated 91,200 cubic metres of dirt with shovels, picks, wheelbarrows, and horse-drawn wagons. Large equipment was not used …”. The result: a deeper lake, the creation of Willow and Spruce Islands, and jobs for the unemployed during hard times. In 2003-2004 “The Big Dig” – an $18-million project that further deepened and revitalized Wascana Lake – resulted in more islands and the Albert Street Promenade.     

     Simonson begins her book with a Henry David Thoreau quote: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Sheena Simonson, I like what you see, and am grateful you’ve shared it.  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEWS: Michael Kenyon's A Year at River Mountain; Andrew McEwan's Conditional

“A Year at River Mountain”

by Michael Kenyon

Published by Thistledown Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95  ISBN 978-1-927068-04-5

     Sometimes a book is a river, drawing us in. Such is A Year at River Mountain, by heralded BC writer Michael Kenyon. The enigmatic 68-year-old narrator of Kenyon’s introspective novel is, like most of us, trying to make sense of his life. The former stage and screen actor’s removed himself from the manic “engine,” “blue-green anger” and “loneliness” of the western world to seek harmony and practice acupressure in a Chinese monastery. He writes: “I am at River Mountain because I have turned my back on my family, history, country.” His former world included an estranged wife and son and his professional roles; stark contrast to the valley, mountains, temples, plum trees, bamboo forest and fellow monks that surround him now.

     It sounds pacific, but there are memories to wrestle with, and desire, and near the river beneath the monastery, nomadic tribes spar over boundaries and hungry children go missing.

     The nameless monk’s past and present converge; he has traded “monks for players, master for director” as he goes about his daily routines of prayers, meditation, chores (ie: sweeping leaves from the temple path so the walk to and fro is soundless), meetings with the master, and practicing one-point acupressure (“the mapping of stars within the human body”) on other monks and villagers who require healing. The narrator says, “This calm collaboration. Being solitary in community. It is all I ever really wanted.” He considers what bowing meant in his former life, and what it means now: “Each time I am bowed to I bow, while offstage music plays.”

      Kenyon possesses a writing style all his own. It’s dreamy, hypnotic. Seemingly random observations, asides and ideas are like stones in a river; his narrator at once child and elder, leaping across them. The short, subtitled sections often read like prose poems. A single section might include a memory from his married life, the master’s tears, and the seals in Active Pass. Lush descriptions of the weather and landscape are teased out between passages concerning monastic life and the narrator’s relationships with his spiritual brothers (including the blind bellringer, Frank, who lived in Illinois and “is good at small engine repairs”); Zou Yiyuan, the wise, nomadic dwarf who becomes his new master; and Zou Yiyuan’s beautiful, shamanic sister. There’s also the expectation of the return of Imogen, the “blonde and waif-like” Canadian actor who’s both chimera and “a kind of guide, pointing out this and that, this icon, that text.”

      Kenyon’s characters are never dull and dialogue is never wasted. Readers are involved via direct address and philosophic questioning, ie: “If the world is still does chaos rise as a kind of sensitivity?”

      As the actor-turned-monk writes his life story, he asks: “How can we tell what doesn’t matter?” Kenyon shows us that it all matters, from “Sunlight on the trees” to “The pulse stored under the skin.”

     One does not so much read this book as swim through it. I feel richer for the tolling bells and the passionate journey.              

     

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

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“Conditional”

Written by Andrew McEwan

Published by Jackpine Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$15.00  ISBN 978-1-927035-17-7

     Vancouverite Andrew McEwan’s Conditional, a saddle-stitched chapbook, contains two alternately playful and serious poems, or meditations. The first, “Spreading Sheets,” takes inspiration from a quote about stratus clouds, derived from an 1803 text called Essay on the Modification of Clouds (by Luke Howard). In the resulting text-which alternatingly appears on symbolically transparent vellum pages in a free verse style and on gray cotton pages in prose poem blocks-the poet asks “what is this fog?”

     Fog, here, is up for interpretation. The author alludes to Vancouver’s “visibility issues,” and hovering mainland\mists,” to condensation from the bathroom mirror,” and perhaps also to the fog of human thought as we wait in queues, “cannot see the object of our mourning,” and listen to financial and real estate market forecasts.

     Or perhaps it is none of these. McEwan keeps us entertained and guessing with disparate thoughts. “Of the animals seen today only the blanket of crows migrating past reads as symbolic,” he writes. And in the next two lines: “A rezoning is in progress. Everything is on sale except for the waterproof outerwear.”

     This first poem registers contemporary social chaos like sound-bites, includes domestic and writerly habits (“In bed for days at a time, turning dictionary pages”), and makes us think: “Routines test forgery as a method for coping with absence.” 

     The second poem, “Return Policy,” is written in couplets interspersed with retail instructions, ie: “Any purchase made by debit card\will be refunded to the original debit card.”

     I like this idea of found poetry: of taking the phrases we hear or read so often we don’t ordinarily give them another thought (unless we need to, say, return an appliance). It is akin to the modern art installation: it’s the bringing together of disparate elements to create something new that warrants admiration.

     Irony is a key element in this hand-sized, limited-edition (only 75 copies) chapbook published by Saskatchewan’s Jackpine Press. “As far as the eye can see the eye overlooks,” McEwan writes. “Proximity counterfeits acquaintance.” I particularly enjoyed this statement: “We knew the rules starting out, but forgot\the implications.”

     McEwan has much to say in this small book, and I expect we’ll be hearing more from him. Aside from Conditional, he’s also authored repeater (a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award), and the chapbooks Input / Output and This Book Is Depressing.

     To learn more about this and Jackpine’s many other unique chapbooks, see www.jackpinepress.com.

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