writes.
Writing and Disability is something I pondered at substack and will probably loop back to again.
At the moment I have 4 books I’m processing to review. Another incoming by mail. And a book blurb. And my own poems to edit.
But first I want to finish our cosplay. I need a certain jacket and delivery of a wig then we’re golden. Unless I decide to dye or remake a vest.
Orion Sweeping by Anne Marie Todkill (Brick, 2022) has a cover of a pen and ink fox and moon by Arthur Balitskiy I’d consider framing. Divided into four self-explanatory sections: “Earth”, “Air”, “Familia”, “Loss Lessons” and “Assisi Variations”, the book has some overlap with Nuclear Family by Jean van Loon (McGill Queens University Press 2022), Both talk about the literal and figurative fall out of nuclear testing. I recall voting for “Strontium-90” in Arc’s Poem of the Year contest and was glad to see it come to print.
My encapsulation of the book is “happy” which is perhaps contrary to this subject, but the book arcs from remembering Los Alamos. After these poem the books diverge, van Loon’s into family and Todkill into the yearning and burning world outside of human interaction, among the cherished other species. When Todkill talks of people, it is processing the present, rather than delving into deep past.
Unlike books that invoke the wonder of other species, this does not do the seemingly obligatory hectoring last chapter of how we have destroyed it all. She starts with the destruction and moves into the continual genesis.
It is the angle as much as the subject. As Todkill put it, (p. 9) “Any vantage is enough to reposition history:/ some hold it close/as a stone ’s throw, /a Tonka-toy catastrophe”. The world is a threatening place but expressed with striking forms, as in “Route Options: a prayer to St. Christoper”,(p. 12) “Hide from me the flare /of roadside.crosses’/unfading flowers.”
She has a groundedness and an attentiveness to small details as shown in “Trove” (p. 15) “I set rows of seeds / as white as grubs..They will shoulder through/ the ground after rain” There’s the optimism despite. Seeds and self “shoulder through”, a lovely verb. The unity struck me of the metaphor of seeds as being grubs, both things of the earth that grow and transform, embodying how life itself by nature transforms. That entire poem phrase by phrase can’t have a letter changed. A perfect little gem.
After the nuclear mess made by humans, come the predators, the various four-footed mammals to take back the earth and poems. What did we see, was it wolf (p. 19) “taking the measure of our doubt, /then vanishing.”
When we take to the (section) “Air”, we enter the realm of birds. She has an interesting tack, referring to the sounds of wild geese “skidding into gravity” with “all that migratory muscle” to brake in (p. 27) “the restlessness/ of all things normal and recurrent.” An interesting aspect to consider. There are our constants like clay and there are our constant of longer loops of seasons that reassure. She is plainspoken but the language has a sweet distillation and compression.
Even the section “Familia” is through the lens of animals, plants and objects and what endures or fails to. For example, p. 47, “I’d have to say/that in the family inventory/of things that didn’t last,/
the double concrete laundry tub/was the most surprising.” We are not shown as separate or separable from the rest.
She has a suprising and compact way of telling with specifics and astute turns of phrase “there’s no remedy/for chance.” (“Fall Risk”, p. 53). “Loss Lessons” puts us in humble context. If all is lost with people, still there are birds. Still there is the world. The planet is not anthropocentric, only people are.
She makes an interesting point on loss, as not being only lack of contact, but lack of meaningful connection (“Biographical Fallacy”, p. 75) and “Fish Science” (p. 76) “I read his taciturnity as he muttered/one or two facts/about the habits of fish/ as a kind of tenderness/ toward the world/
(by which I mean/an understanding).” Indeed, knowing about and knowing are distinct. Poets have a habit of listing species name instead of conveying how web of life intermeshes.
The last section of the book is historical fiction from the 1200s. It matches in voice. It gives voice to a wolf, stepping back from the primacy of perspective that must be human. It underscores the constant warlike tendency of our bent human brain, setting us apart from the other animals, as inferiors. Yet among us we have St. Francis de Assissis who maintain the importance and connection of the other species we are lucky enough to be among.
When August started I was on a fantasy novel kick. Patricia Briggs, Megan Bannen, Neil Gaiman, and Andri Snaer Magnason, Kimberly Lemming and Sangu Mandanna. Sure, I could do those and continue poetry, right? I often alternate between poetry binges and novel binges but I could do parallel binges. Push more through the head, why not.
Sometimes pushing through the slog of hard-to-understand is good for stretch goals, to push past normal comfort. Part of Sealey Challenge is to read different and to share the love of what you uncover. Stretch is the theme. (I shared some of what I read as Poem of the Day at bluesky and instagram and in past posts here.)
So it’s September and I’m still standi— er, still sitting.
Reading causes writing sometimes so I wrote more novel scenes, and a chapbook. Was it more than normal? Not sure. I’ve done 50,000 word over the last 4 months in poetry, not counting scraps of paper and convenient but not in the right folder files.
But, I digress. Sealey. My order may be mussed since I forgot to put dates in my spreadsheet.
At one point it became a cleaning operation. What was misfiled, flagged to read or reread, or fallen behind a desk. Or new to me, thus trumping everything honourable working its way up the TBR pile.
You have to be in the right mood to hear a particular book. That can take luck and years sometimes.
Poetry can be overwhelming. It is disproportionally distressed, even compared against the poets. It is intense as heavy food, never meant for constant consumption. Could it be true, everything in moderation?
At one point, I had finished my partly finished books, and was looking for something short, simple and easy to read to meet quota. Once I realized the title a day had fallen to that, I was out. It misses the point of poetry if it isn’t a point of growth and challenge and delight. I cheat myself. How far did I get?
27? Did I count that right? I only took a 4 day break? Seemed like more.
And a run of 5 days of chapbooks. And other chapbooks scattered through. Huh, still that’s a thing.
It’s not length. Some short things are hard to parse and some long things are breezy. And visa versa. But measurement is something. Egad, like 2000 pages of poetry. Or not, some were half or three quarters read before the month started with a push to finish, and some were re-reads so not the same cognitive weight exactly. Still, I don’t want to do that to myself again. Reading so much is an argument for only reading the best. And moderately.
If you missed it, a message from Brandon,
Over September and October (and beyond, if it takes a while) we’ll be looking for a whole new group of board members and volunteers, and a new artistic director. It has been an absolute honour and pleasure to curate and host Tree events as I have since 2020, but it feels like the time is right to move Tree back into in-person events that better highlight the beauty of Ottawa’s literary communities.
A transition to new board members and a new artistic director…
