American poet, critic, editor and publisher Han VanderHart was good enough to include my World's End, (ARP Books, 2023) on their "Ten Remarkable Small Press Titles I Read This Year" list! Thanks so much! I'm so rarely on lists, so this is even further exciting, certainly (and I clearly need to catch up on the other nine titles included). And if such intrigues, you should check out when VanderHart interviewed me earlier this year for an episode of the On Poetry Podcast, yes?
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ben Robinson
Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin, an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023. His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September 2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first chapbook helped me meet poets. It took this thing—poetry—that I was spending an increasing amount of time thinking about, and gave me a way to connect with like-minded folks through reading and mailing and editing and exchanging.
My first book was maybe an extension of this, but also its opposite. For all of the grief about the decline of the book, I think there’s still a certain amount of cultural capital attached to the idea of having published a book, such that my first one brought me back into contact, even briefly, with old neighbours, former classmates, friends from out of the country, etc.
As for how my most recent book, As Is, compares to the earlier work, I think there are common concerns around closely investigating inherited pieces of my identity, like my name, my relationship to Christianity, or my hometown, and trying to come to both a deeper understanding of the way these forces have shaped me, and also how I might want to relate to them in the future. That sounds somewhat individualistic, but I hope these reflections also scale up, that they might contribute to broader conversations.
I think As Is differs from my past work in that it’s perhaps the most explicitly political. Perhaps that’s because it’s about place and, while I share other aspects of my identity, the communal aspect is undeniable when thinking about a city.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I’m not sure that I did come to poetry first. I used to write short fiction but it never felt quite right. I took a lot of my early work in many genres to the various writers-in-residence at the Hamilton Public Library. One WiR that I took stories to helped me, in maybe an inadvertent way, to see that I didn’t really care about the rules of fiction, or at least conventional fiction. I would bring in a story and she would ask these questions about plot and character development that I had no clue about and ultimately wasn’t interested in. I’d say that I came to poetry because of its comparative openness. I’m not always sure that what I write are 100% poems, but there seems to be a higher tolerance for divergence in the poetry world.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I’m a real notebook writer. The poems often come when I find the connection between a couple of images or lines in my notes, when it feels like there’s a charge, like there’s something that merits exploring. Sometimes it takes a while to find exactly why I’m drawn to a line or how it might be used, but once I find that connection, the poem tends to emerge quickly as I find it difficult to think about much else in the meantime.
Lately, I’ve been trying to keep my drafts unsettled for as long as possible. I often find it hard to get back to the generative space with a piece once I’ve gone into editing mode, so I’ve been letting my poems stay unfinished for as long as possible, giving them time to morph and stretch.
4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A bit of both, I think. I wrapped up writing As Is at the start of 2023 and I wasn’t sure what would be next. I didn’t write any new poems for almost a year, and when the new ones did come, I didn’t immediately see what the connections were, but it’s exciting to watch the themes slowly emerge and start to coalesce; there's something akin to the way a poem reveals itself in the writing that can also happen with a collection, I think.
The first new poems I wrote were about my experience of fatherhood and then, seemingly out of nowhere, I wrote a couple of poems about bad advice I’d received in my life, almost exclusively from men. While the connection might seem obvious now, at the time I wasn’t convinced these two sets of poems were part of the same project. I’m trying to increase my tolerance for that divergence, trusting that the variety will ultimately make for a more interesting and less predictable collection as opposed to working backward from a theme and intentionally writing poems on particular subjects.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I think it depends when you ask me. On the day of a reading, I might say that they’re counter to my process because I find the anticipation kind of immobilizing, whereas once I’m about two minutes into a reading or after, I’d probably say they’re part of the process. It’s great to meet other poets and readers of poetry, to share the poems I’ve been tinkering with in solitude, but it takes a lot out of me. Maybe the nerves will go away one day, but they haven’t yet. Now I just know to expect them and keep going.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I find this kind of question hard to answer. I did an interview with Kevin Heslop for my last book and it felt like a kind of creative therapy—he had such great language for the connections between my projects that I’m not all that conscious of. Each project has its particular theoretical concerns, but the broader ones are more elusive. I guess I’m interested in the big questions: How should we live? What to do with life’s many coincidences and contradictions?
I think I’m more concerned with the effect of my writing. The books that I love feel essential, both as pieces of writing, and also to my life in general; they keep me attuned to the many nuances of experience that tend to get flattened out in daily living. I read a blurb once that talked about “obliterating cliche” [Anne Boyer, The Undying] which I like—to take the old standards (life, death, love, home, family, etc.) and find some small particularity that might make them feel urgent again.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’m not sure that I operate in the larger culture, but I’m okay with small. The writers I respect, even in their limited and local ways, are doing the difficult work of thinking deeply, of escaping the rut of what has already been thought, or written down, or is Googleable and are revealing how much more complex life is out beyond the bounds of the feasible, the realistic or the expedient.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Yes, certainly both. I’ve tried to get better at emotionally preparing myself for editing, to resist defensiveness. My default position tends to be either wholesale acceptance or rejection of suggestions, but I’ve been getting better at slowing down and evaluating edits individually.
Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great editors (as well as poets in their own rights) like Karen Solie and Annick MacAskill. My work is much stronger for their engagements with it, but, despite the fact that they are both unfailingly lovely people, it’s a vulnerable process for me. Ultimately, I try to remind myself that there are plenty of people in my life (thankfully) that I could go to for simple praise, to tell me that the poems are “good,” and while praise is certainly nice and, to an extent, necessary, constructive and insightful feedback is so much harder to come by and is a real gift that ought to be treated as such.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Put the problem into the poem - Robert Hass. This one works for both writing and life, I think.
Sometimes I’ll make lists of my worries about a given piece, about what might be missing, about how it might be misread. Some of these worries just need to be written down and then moved on from, others help reveal what might be missing in the project. When I was writing “Between the Lakes” which is a long poem that threads throughout As Is, I was concerned that the poem, which is trying to engage with the land, was doing so largely from within the confines of a car which was of course actively degrading that same land. After reading Gabriel Guddings' Rhode Island Notebook where he obsessively lists his mileage and direction of travel, I realized that I needed to address this tension in the poem and so, in the final version, I included moments where the smeared windshield, or the gas station—the material conditions of the poem’s construction—are visible and I think the piece is stronger for it.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to reviews to music)? What do you see as the appeal?
I don’t think of the transitions in terms of ease or difficulty. As much as I love poetry, there are only so many hours I can spend with it in a given day, and when I reach that saturation point, it’s not easy or difficult to transition, just necessary. They are all pursuits that I enjoy and they certainly feed one another, but I move between them in the same way that I might leave off writing a poem to ride my bike, or make dinner: because I think it’s important and valuable to fill a life with many different endeavours.
The reviews or interviews are a bit more related, but I think they started as, and continue to be, a natural outflow of my reading practice, of trying to think deeply about poetry and then wanting to offer some of that time and effort to others. They are another way to participate in a literary community, to escape the limits of introversion and ask brilliant people about their practice in a structured environment that also hopefully serves to bring more readers to work that I think is useful or excellent or interesting.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
My routine has shifted a lot lately. Right now, with it being summer and having both my sons home all the time, my routine is no routine—writing a bit on the bus to work, in the back room of the library on my lunch hour, at the kitchen counter while the little one naps and the big one watches his shows, in the rare moments where the boys play quietly together and I try to stay as still as possible, so as not to disrupt them.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Like many, I turn back to reading. I go back to the books that have resonated with me or go looking for something new that will show me fresh possibilities. I ride my bike, which seems to open up a less conscious part of my brain that is capable of quickly solving problems I’ve been fussing with for hours.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a poor sense of smell, to be honest. We have a lilac bush in the yard and my wife loves lilacs so maybe that? My kids love bananas, or at least the first two bites of a banana, so perhaps the remaining 80% of the banana that is then abandoned beneath the couch or somewhere similarly out of the way. Flowers and decaying fruit, like a Caravaggio. There are many things I like about our house, but its “fragrance” isn’t always top of the list.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Well for As Is, the book came from historical plaques, local newspapers, neighbourhood watch Facebook groups, archives, old maps, Google Maps, the land itself, by-laws, lawn signs, murals, government forms, realtor fliers, and road signs.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The aforementioned Gabriel Gudding’s Rhode Island Notebook, C.D. Wright, Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now, Solmaz Sharif’s Look, Ari Banias’s A Symmetry, Layli Long Soldier’s “38,” Doug Williams’s Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, Catherine Venable Moore’s introduction to Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead, Susan Howe, bpNichol’s The Martyrology Book 5, Greg Curnoe’s Deeds/Abstracts, Emma Healey’s “N12”, and Zane Koss’s Harbour Grids.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Escape monolingualism.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
My first thoughts were all writer-adjacent: journalist, podcaster, documentarian.
There was a time when I wanted to be a recording engineer. I find cutting audio meditative.
Increasingly, I’m fascinated by photography, but I don’t imagine the career prospects are much better than poetry.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Probably some mix of the low barrier to entry, a preference toward working alone, being content to sit in one place for long periods of time, and an inability to move on from the structure of school.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I loved Joyelle McSweeney’s Death Styles. The music in her poems is blaring and raucous. And she went so far into the underworld for this one, at once viscerally engaging with the unimaginable heartbreak of losing a newborn but also venturing off into all the other realms where poets dwell. It’s both mythic and materialist in the best way.
As for movies, those seem to be the one art form that I haven’t figured out how to fit into life as a parent without splitting a 2-hour film across four sittings. I have a Google spreadsheet of Movies to Watch, like a 2005 version of Letterboxd, which I have not made much progress on lately. The odd time when my family goes away without me, I watch as many movies as I can to make up for it. Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up was a highlight of my last binge—a moving but unassuming look at how art comes from, and is also thwarted by, daily life. Some great weirdos in it, dysfunctional family, but gentle and nearly plotless like many of my favourites.
20 - What are you currently working on?
As I mentioned above, I’m working on a collection of poems that seems to be focused on fatherhood. I have two young boys who (often delightfully) take up much of my time and energy, so like Hass says, I am putting the problem into the poem, trying to engage with an experience that is often either absent from literature or overly sentimentalized, to document some of the amazing thinking that children do.
Friday, October 25, 2024
Ben Robinson, As Is
THE ORIGINAL TREATY between the Mississaugas
and the British described the upper boundary of
the parcel as an imagined line from Lake Ontario
northwest to Deshkan Ziibi / La Tranche / The
Thames. To confirm it, Jones & co. set out on
foot from the lake, crossing the Speed and the
Grand before reaching the Conestoga. Realizing
their line would never meet the specified river,
thus could not close the perimeter, they turned
home to inform the Crown that the Indenture
entitled it to an
impossible tract.
The latest from Hamilton poet Ben Robinson, following The Book of Benjamin (Windsor ON: Palimpsest Press, 2024) [see my review of such here], is As Is (Winnipeg MB: ARP Books, 2024), a collection that opens, appropriately enough, with a quote by the late London, Ontario artist Greg Curnoe: “It is a long distance call from London to Putnam (25km). / It is not a long distance call from London to Glencoe (50km).” The quote emerges from Curnoe’s infamous Deeds/Abstracts (London ON: Brick Books, 1995), and Robinson utilizes As Is with similar intent, even if far different approach: attempting to explore and articulate his own relationship to geographic space and its wealth of history, from his own immediate back through well before European occupation. Whereas Curnoe explored the specific Lot upon which sat his house, Robinson explores specific elements of his Hamilton, Ontario, where, as his author biography has offered in the past, he has only ever lived. “I push my son through our neighbourhood.” he writes, to open “By-law to Provide for and Regulate a Waste / Management System for the City of Hamilton,” “It’s just us / and the dog people. A three-legged chair on a lawn, / a box spring at the curb with NO BUGS spray painted / on it in black.” Through long sweeps of short lines and historical space interspersed with shorter, first-person lyrics, Robinson provides As Is the feel of a kind of field notes, moving across and through layers of personal history, the history of Hamilton, and the occupation of centuries. “He didn’t realize that in this country,” he writes, as part of “Remediation,” “when a white man / runs his boat into something, it gets name after him. / Fifty years later, randlereef.ca is adorned / with a logo of a tern flying low over water.” Composed as a poetic suite on and around overlooked and neglected histories, Robinson folds in and incorporates research and first-person observation, moving in and across time, references and intimacies deep and distant, from kept lawns and parenting to city founders, landscapes and boundaries, and what passes for history, passing notes like waterways.
Founder’s Day
It is not a metaphor
that the city’s original
square
sketched by Mr. George
Hamilton
was centred around a
prison,
that though the jail’s
wooden walls were sound
its foundation was so
compromised
an inmate need only lift
the loose board
in the corner to make his
exit,
that once free, if he
followed the main road south,
it would have led straight
to the founder’s door.
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
two new reviews!
It has been very nice to see two new reviews of my titles pop up lately! Pearl Pirie was good enough to review World's End, (ARP Books, 2023) over at The Miramichi Review, and Nick Thran offered this review of the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) via Event magazine; thanks so much! And of course, I'm attempting to keep track of all links to my reviews over at my author site, here.
Sunday, December 03, 2023
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nina Mosall
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Well, Bebakhshid is my first book! I think it sobered me in relation to what it means to have a book published and be seen as an "official" writer. I guess I would say it's been humbling, anti-climatic, and surreal? Big words!
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Without sounding pretentious, I think poetry is in my blood. I'm Iranian, and my father was born and raised in the city of Shiraz, known as the "city of poets." My father recited and read many Persian poems to me as a child, so it definitely wasn't a form I was unfamiliar with. But overall, poetry came to me secondary in the trajectory of my life. I initially thought myself a fiction writer, and had been slowly working up to full length novels by writing tons of short stories in my highschool years. During my time there, a teacher had told me that poetry wasn't my strong suit, and to stick to fiction instead - as a very serious, sensitive, and insecure kid, I took that sentiment to heart and didn't doubt it for a second. It wasn't until my time in university that I felt permission to experiment and explore where my gut told me to go. That's when I got serious about poetry.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
As of late, it's taken me a while to start projects. I'm learning to balance my non-writing world with my writing world, and hoping to be able to merge the two. As a result, I start and stop projects numerous times.
When the spark appears, the writing comes to me quickly, like I'm trying to catch what my brain is showing me before it's too late! But I edit poems a few time. I have a lot of scribbles, repeated lines, and synonyms written on the pages of my notebooks.
4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
It usually begins with an image that comes up in my mind and leaves an impression on me. Sometimes it begins with a feeling I have and I can't place, but I can imagine it or think of words or sentences associated with that feeling.
As a younger writer, I believe I wrote pieces without any kind of cohesiveness or project in mind. Now, I think it helps me with focus and discipline to have some kind of plan in mind. But of course, the heart writes what it wants to write!
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings have no influence or part in my creative process.
For the longest time, I disliked doing readings a lot. I had this idea that my work was only meant to be read internally, privately, amongst one's loved ones, or maybe in front of an audience...but not by me! Sometimes I still feel that way. My writing makes me feel vulnerable but honest, and to perform it (which is how I feel when I do readings) feels the opposite of that. I also fear being misinterpreted, or seen differently than how I or my loved ones see me. But I can't control that, and does it really matter? Once the words are out, they're not just mine anymore. On a more positive note, I do enjoy networking among fellow writers - it's always lovely to feel less alone and among people who also love what you love. Talking to people who resonated with my readings is also such a lovely, sincere experience. I cherish that. I've also had such amazing opportunities to share the stage with talented and experienced writers, such as yourself, rob. That is truly the highlight for me! I've been able to read with people I read in my undergraduate classes!
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
In relation to Bebakhshid, I think a concern I explored was, "will I ever understand?"
Some of the questions I had during the process of writing the poems that ended up in the book were in relation to understanding my parents, their varied past, and my cultural and religious roots. Who are these people who raised me aside from being the people who raised me? What was their experience in and out of Iran during a time of immense political tension? What was their experience being refugees? What are they going through? Who am I in relation to my parents? Who am I in relation to my culture? I also had a lot of questions about familial relationships, as that has always been an area of concern and fascination with me. What does it take to be a family? What kind of bonds occur? Will my family ever be happy? Will I ever understand what it means to have a family bond? Etc.
Currently, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like the book was published so I could move on with my life. I still grapple with these questions and topics, but to go back to that book and fully explore it again feels like I'd be moving backwards in my writing and personal life. Although it is my first and something I hold dear, I also feel a bit combative towards my book now. I resent having the writer-of-colour label and tokenism that comes with it. I'm currently tired of exclusively focusing and talking about my ethnic and cultural identity. Books take a few years to publish, and so it's been around 4-5 years since the last poem that was written in Bebakhshid. I feel and am different now.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I don't know what the role of a writer should be. I also don't think I have much skin in the game to speak to that. But I see the role of a writer being one who can document, interpret, and convey information through many forms. To share things, whatever they may be. To inspire someone else to write, maybe. I don't know. Don't take my answer seriously.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. It was a new experience for me to work with an editor. I value feedback and constructive criticism. Although I feel vulnerable writing, I am not precious with my work in relation to editing it. I would say it's essential because it gets you out of your own head and in the present moment.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
To be vulnerable is to be brave!
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find poetry my comfort and much easier now than it was when I was in high school. I haven't written much fiction as a result - it's a little daunting!
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Currently, I am all over the place and don't have a routine. But usually, when I'm more gathered, I try to write early in the morning by my window. Otherwise, I'll write when it comes to me - that can often be in a movie theatre, the park, a coffee shop that feels just right, or out in nature.
Lately, a typical day begins with taking my dog, Honey, out for a long walk. This is followed by some stretching, a cup of tea, and maybe a bit of reading if I have enough time.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I find reading doesn't usually encourage me to write. I don't often get inspiration from other books or authors. I usually get inspiration from the visual arts, or being present. Films, paintings, and performance art keep me curious. I also love learning about almost everything. Fixating on subjects, people, events, etc gets my wheels turning. People watching, fully engaging with the everyday (much which is mundane) has also provided me some mental clarity to be able to write.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Mowed grass.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Yes! Movies. I love movies. I love going to the movies, talking about movies, reading about movies, dreaming about movies, blah blah blah. Good movies do the same thing a good poem does for me. It leaves me feeling things I don't know how to convey, and makes me want to capture them. It leaves such an impression on my outlook on life and my understanding of other human beings. It makes me feel human! I love movies. Did I mention I love movies?
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I've enjoyed Ottessa Moshfegh's work. I like the ugliness of it. She writes well and she knows it - her confidence with herself is something I hope I can have a little of.
Shel Silverstein has marvelous poetry collections that are cleverly written for children and adults to enjoy. I find them amusing. The Giving Tree is a heartbreaker.
Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" has left a haunting impact on my worldview.
Jon Krakauer writes true stories so well. He balances fact and emotional vulnerability perfectly, to me. I enjoy his book Into the Wild, and re-read it every so often.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien has taught me a lot about the power of storytelling and the approach to take when doing so.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Have my own form of family.
Act - specifically die a horrific death in a major horror film.
Work with animals on a farm.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Since I'm not a full time writer, I am currently working as a Librarian. I'd probably be a homemaker if the stars aligned. Otherwise, maybe something in the film industry. A director if I'm feeling brave.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing has always come easy to me. I loved to read, and gained an advanced vocabulary for my age. I was also a quiet, shy child who often internalized a lot of my feelings. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, so I kept myself company with myself. I had many diaries and notebooks that I filled with all the things I didn't feel I could say aloud, and stories I hoped to experience. Writing had and has been my voice in the world.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
For a book, probably The Door by Magda Szabó.
For a film, The Sound of Metal
20 - What are you currently working on?
A Children's book of poetry. A collection of poems in response to films. Being kinder to myself.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
Sunday, November 26, 2023
two recent reviews of World's End, (ARP Books, 2023)
Here's the first review of the book, kindly written by Kingston poet Wanda Praamsma as part of a group review (alongside Sandra Ridley's latest, etc) via the Toronto Star! See the original review here.
World’s EndHere's UK poet Billy Mills, who posted this on his blog, as part of a group review (see the original post here):
by rob mclennan
ARP Books, 64 pages, $18
These poems take on the quality of measured breath — inhale inhale pause, exhale. Inhale, and exhale. In so doing, they slow us down, a necessary and welcome step for all, but particularly needed while moving through the births of children and their early years, as mclennan is/was. “A circle of latitude, this/rushing force/of birth; of hours. … Days fold, moments. Into/collapse, and/still.,” he writes in “The small return.” mclennan applies beginner’s mind — the ability to address everything anew — to every poem and fragment; he appears a Zen master through his meditative sequencing, though not unruffle-able to the trials. “Oh, you are stupid, death./You’re drunk; go home.” Intertwined are mclennan’s welcome lessons on process and form (“Attempt to see if sentences can breathe, take root, grow limbs.”) and the abundance of clarity gleaned from small children: “I later gift the toddler a small/plastic robot. She names it: robot.” No need to overcomplicate. These poems send that message: Simplify, breathe, look around.
The Worlds End of rob mclennan’s title is, we are told in an epigraph, is a ‘pub on the outskirts of a town, especially if on or beyond the protective city wall’; a space that is both convivial and liminal and a tone-setter for the book.
As a poet, editor, publisher and blogger, mclennan is a key figure in a world of poets, and this community is reflected in the fact that most of the poems that make up this book have individual epigraphs from writers, the regulars in the World’s End. A sense of poetry as being intrinsic to the world weaves through the book right from the opening section, ‘A Glossary of Musical Terms’:
The Key of S
Hymn, antiphonal. Response, response. A trace of fruit-flies, wind. And from this lyric, amplified. This earth. Project, bond. So we might see. Easy. Poem, poem, tumble. Sea, to see. Divergent, sky. Deer, a drop of wax. Design, a slip-track.
This melding of the natural and domestic worlds (hinted at by the slip-track) with the world of poetry and language is characteristic of mclennan’s work here, with frequent pivots on words that can be read as noun or verb (project). The carefully disrupted syntax calls out the sense of observing from the margins. This can lend a sense of Zen-like simple complexity, a tendency towards silence:
Present, present, present. Nothing in particular.
In the poems in verse, this disruption is often counterpointed by deft assonances:
A gesture: colour match.
Describe, describe. Sarcophagi. Small bite marks
perforate the humerus.
[from ‘Cervantes’ Bones’]
The second aspect of convivial community is family and parenting; the book overflows with babies and toddlers:
Toddler’s outstretched arms,
convinced herself bigger
than she still is, asks: Let me
hold her. Two ducks,
three. The western shoal,
swift curl of seagull, her
newborn deep
and impenetrable.
The contours
of a shapeless day.
Their mother, relieved
she finally out.
[from ‘Two ghazals, for newborn’]
As the book progresses, these themes become more closely interwoven, a process that comes to a head in the penultimate section, ‘mmm’ (the final one is just two pages long, so effectively at the end of the book):
We. Are turning a boundary.
Shush. Shush. Be quiet. Shush. Restrain. Restraint. Abate. Or don’t. Could never. Can’t. I couldn’t. Please. I beg you. Silence, or.
Begat, begat. This is a copy of a document held by the Office of the Registrar General. Begat, begat. Ceaselessly exposed, and hollow. Cyclical, ends. This grown head strikes a ceiling.
Until a separation, there can be no relation. Is this true?
Parthenogenesis. Maternal instinct, strikes. If you the only one. Trade for passage, ours. Delighted. Like it was the day before the day before. Slips through the fingers.
Former mother. Birth. My wrong grammar implicates.
It’s a quietly powerful conclusion to a book that benefits from, and fully merits, careful rereading. At the start of this review, I listed some of mclennan’s many roles in the world of poetry. Let there be no doubt, the primary one is poet.