#18: VERSeFest Special by Peter F. Yacht Club
tether by Jill Stengel
Both titles published by above/ground press, 2013.
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| Peter F Yacht Club Issue #18 |
Unlike TREE Reading Series, The Dusty Owl and many other events
that swirl Ottawa’s literary calendar, the Peter F. Yacht Club has all these
years remained something of a mystery to me. For a time I’d even presupposed that,
whatever it was, the prestige of its title alone suggested that I wasn’t meant
to know! But the history of the Peter F. Yacht Club was always available –
right here, in fact – and while its membership seems a tricky thing to keep
track of, its spoils are perfectly tangible. Turns out Peter F. Yacht Club
publishes sporadic compilations (another thing I didn’t know!) of work from its
burgeoning network and that, if Issue #18 is anything to go by, the prestige of
the club’s title is well-earned.
Unveiled in time for VERSeFEST, Issue #18 pulls no punches,
enlisting strong pieces by 23 poets who’ve at some point called Ottawa home.
Cameron Anstee’s “Late January” opens the weighty 8.5 x 11 issue on a poignant
note, stating “I miss every one who leaves this city / and some who remain”.
Besides highlighting a chilly theme that reverberates through wintry and memorable
entries by Pearl Pirie and Monty Reid, Anstee’s nostalgia echoes vacancies
spotting Ottawa’s literary tradition, in which Peter F. Yacht Club plays a
convincing microcosm. (As mclennan mentions in his write-up of the Club’s history, when a hardworking writer leaves a place, their footprint tends to
vanish as well.)
Whatever desertions have plagued Ottawa’s literary scene,
there’s no evidence of vacancy on these pages. Ben Ladouceur’s “Shuttle” zeroes
in on the alien struggle of finding the rhythm in somewhere new. William
Hawkins’ “In Memoriam” offers a stark tribute that succinctly wrestles beauty
and death. Two haunting excerpts of Sandra Ridley’s “Testamonium” (from The
Counting House, forthcoming from BookThug this fall) convey the troubled
limitations of loyalty and despondence, while Monty Reid’s command of pace and
detail renders his excerpt from Intelligence an inquisitive highlight,
probing and countering the smarts of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
with his own.
“I don’t know how many people have to not know
something before it’s intelligence.
At least one.
I must be the one that makes the smart people
smart.
I don’t know if anyone else was watching
11pm, at the Montreal Road entrance, ice fog
clamped around the lights.
I don’t know the what of it, or the risk of the what
of it.
But you know what? Around the circumference, fog
burns.”
Despite the showcase of singular voices, there’s a strange
fluidity afoot – be it quality control or some stately muse each author gleaned
from their time crossing the Rideau. Either way the selections here are often
crushing; Stephen Brockwell’s excerpts from Metonymies: Poems by Objects Owned
by Illustrious People and Meghan Jackson’s “star charts” cast profound shadows which compliment each other's distinct approaches to heaviness. Even if it’s a reunion on paper and not in person, the “support
group” ambition that instated the Peter F. Yacht Club ten years ago continues
to bear considerable fruit.
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| tether by Jill Stengel |
Besides that collective’s behemoth offering, I’ve been
spending some time with Davis, California based writer Jill Stengel’s latest
chapbook. Composed of one fragmented long poem and split into sparse stanzas rendering
most pages half blank, tether could easily be misinterpreted – or misread
entirely – as a quick read. But it’s a deceiving one as well; I could breeze
through tether in five mindless minutes if I didn’t feel so compelled to
re-read it as soon as I’ve finished. What Stengel has unearthed is a time
capsule of infant activity; those recess periods, however indifferent to
history, in which we prodded our social and physical limitations.
Such a theme can be appreciated by anyone trapped in the
hectic realm of adulthood. After all, nostalgia’s an easy attraction. Yet
tether’s such a convincing time-warp because Stengel stirs nostalgia in her
readers without wrestling with it herself. By dealing with senses in the
developmental stage, Stengel’s abstract details concerning texture and colour resonate
on a grander scale than any backward-glancing melancholy could.
“one bounce
the feel of rubber
studded with asphalt flecks
one bounce
running
to spin
one-legged
or hang
either way
joy
even with panties showing
exposed
on dress days”
The euphoria of simple awareness – feeling and testing one’s
surroundings – is communicated as much through minutia as through motion,
running and swooping amidst the confusion of made-up games. As tether copes
with the attention span and abandon of carefree id, there’s a growing
self-awareness communicating through broken parenthesis. Stengel closes on a
satisfying mantra but those breakdowns in momentum offer tether’s best spots to
chew on, conveying the confusion of adulthood, reminiscing.
