I’ve said before that I’m rather fond of the books produced by Jim Johnstone’s Anstruther Press: the poems within are often very good at what they are
attempting to do, and occasionally, my interest in what is possible in a poem
overlaps with theirs. My own bias notwithstanding, there are books here worth
paying attention to, and authors here worth following. Anstruther also often
produces first or early chapbooks by Canadian writers, allowing emerging poets
the opportunity to stretch out a bit in a small space, beyond that of the poem
or two in a literary journal. Ottawa-based Ellen Chang-Richardson’s debut is Unlucky Fours (2020), an eight-part sequence of inquiries and hesitations around
origins and familial histories, and how far their reach extends, and how much we
allow those stories to impact on our own. There is much suggested in this poem,
more than the poem has space for, but she manages to present just enough of her
questioning to allow the empty space to envelop.
VI. D.S.
They say that this is
what it means to be Canadian:
a rite of passage,
practiced rote through our parents’ histories.
As I repeat the steps
I watch you
fish the St. Lawrence.
London,
Ontario poet Síle Englert’s second chapbook, after Threadbare (Baseline
Press, 2019), is The Phobic’s Handbook (2020), writing out a lyric suite
of eleven fears: “Coulrophobia,” “Frigophobia,” “Ornithophobia,” “Hominophobia,”
“Venustraphobia,” “Disposophobia,” “Lalophobia,” “Cygnophobia,” “Odontophobia,”
“Xylophobia” and “Ideophobia.” The poems are curious articulations and
explorations of lesser-known phobias, from the “fear of coldness” and the “fear
of disposing of items” to the “fear of men.” “The stolen red mitten becomes a
metaphor for every absent thing.” she writes, as part of “Cygnophobia.” This is
an intriguing suite of poems, and there are moments that I wish she could have
gone further, deeper. Are there more to this series? How far could she go with
these? Part of me wishes she would write thirty more poems around these fears,
and then excise the weaker poems, to see what she might be left with. I think
there is a lot of potential here, and some good moments, writing around and
through a variety of fears, of phobias. As she writes to end the poem “Disposophia”:
“if you feed them, they multiply.”
Venustraphobia
I’ve run out of ways to
write beautiful on walls.
Drained the ink from
calligraphy pens,
liquid hourglass of swoop
and curl
scrawling, only breaking
at doorways.
Moth-eaten synonyms are
many-mouthed like doormats
under the weight of
minutes and shoes.
Tried on, cast off. I see
the stars
blinking through their
holes.
Embroidered on a body
with my woman’s hair:
a spectrum of brittle,
coloured threads.
Coarser where the weather
touches
too much. Stich beautiful
with these
in my schoolteacher
cursive.
It was swallowed more
times than spoken.
Jagged edges, bits broken
off
by teeth or fingernails—
how stone decomposing
into sand
is eventually glass.
Originally
from Ottawa but currently in Toronto is Mahaila Smith, whose debut is Claw Machine (2020), a collection of first-person lyrics constructed out of an
intriguing blend of direct and indirect lines. “I uploaded the family photo album
to the Cloud.” she writes, to open the poem “BACK HOME, LYING IN MY TWIN BED,”
continuing: “Time focused without, before me.” Each poem explores a small scene
or a small moment. In deeply attentive and focused poems, everything else falls
away, but for the small moment that claims her attention; opening large, her
poems contract until there is nothing else but for those final lines, the whole
of each poem aimed there. There is something indirect about her directness that
intrigues. It makes me curious to see what she might do next.
ARCADE BAR
Noisy inside, I choose
amber beer,
drink and wait for a friend,
friends,
loud music, lights, a
movie with a talking duck.
Wait and see you through
the front window:
Are you coming in?
Sitting in a booth,
I’ve brought someone you
should meet.
A man takes a photo
behind us,
pushing crocodile mouths
closed.
Across the floor we shoot
green plastic soldiers
and exploding oil cans,
loadingreloading,
step back and see the
whole labyrinth.
Step forward and break
down crumbling mortar.
