As If A Raven by Yvonne Blomer, Wood by Jennica Harper , North End Love Songs by Katherena Vermette and Ocean by Sue Goyette
Review by Mary MacDonald
A Poetic Trip Across The Country
Come fly with me. From Victoria to Halifax. I’m hungry for adventure. And to come a little untethered. The way poetry can do.
It doesn’t matter about meter or rhyme. The structure of the stanza. The bending of a line. What matters is the cadence of the journey. The lyricism and intelligence.
Four of the most vibrant and original voices in Canada today are coming to Whistler. Poets – Yvonne Blomer, Jennica Harper, Katherena Vermette, and Sue Goyette. And they are going to take us out far and in deep. And for that 60-minute flight, there is going to be turbulence.
The journey takes off in Victoria. Yvonne Blomer’s third collection of poetry, As If A Raven, published this year, touches mythology, biblical text, and science. Blomer bravely explores creation and destruction. In one poem, about Audubon, who, by both shooting and collecting birds, tried to capture their beauty in his paintings –
What was nest has been skimmed
for bone structure, feather lustre,
feathers, beaks, fine-boned wings;
things that have gone missing from trees.
Brace yourself. Accelerating over Vancouver, meet Jennica Harper, poet, writer, and YTV producer. Harper’s third collection, Wood, is a pop culture meditation on parenthood. Playful, tender, surprising, and brave. Quietly powerful. All rings, grain, and layers of echoing. One section of the book, The Box, is about Harry Houdini and his wife. They have no children. These poems are their dream children. Imagined.
Everyone knows how this one’s done.
The trick’s not in mistaking it for real.
The trick is how to make one feel:
the gut-knot longing to come undone.
By Winnipeg, we are soaring at altitude. Katherena Vermette, Métis writer and poet, won the 2013 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry for her first book, North End Love Songs. Her poems are about the importance of place, about how environment changes your life, and about what it means to be First Nations in Canada today. Vermette’s poems stick with you, circling, long after the flight has landed.
indians get drunk
don’t we know it?
do stupid things
like being young
like going home alone
like walking across
a frozen river
not quite frozen
and not making it
to the other side
Nothing is normal on this flight. Prepare for an emergency landing in Halifax, into Sue Goyette’s third collection Ocean. There is nothing left to do but dive in. The ocean becomes the spokesperson for a mythical community of shore dwellers. The ocean also becomes it’s own character.
We laughed at first. At the thought. Like it was
a joke. Imagine, the ocean basting us. But how often
had we walked into its salted air then licked our arms
to taste it later? We were being seasoned. Lightly. Of course we rebelled,
Goyette has a list of awards as deep as the ocean she writes about. In addition, Ocean was short listed for this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize.
Click your heels and come fly with me. We will go out far. And in deep. And we will find our way back home.
Mary MacDonald is a poet, writer, and member of the Whistler writing group, The Vicious Circle. She will be reading at the Literary Cabaret October 17th and moderating Journey Without Maps on October 18th at the Whistler Writers Festival.
This review first appeared in Pique Newsmagazine on October 09, 2014.