By Mary Vlooswyk
The Oneironaut 02
by Sheri-D Wilson
Write Bloody North (2025)
The Oneironaut 02 by Sheri-D Wilson, is the second book in her long-poem fantasy, dystopian trilogy. The wild dream state of bespectacled, brilliant scientist, Rain, continues at a fast pace. Rain is defying the oppressive D.O.D (Department of Dreams) who force their citizens to take a Meta Noia pill to prevent them from dreaming.
The Willows of Sweven, omnipotent, clairvoyant, keepers of dreams are seven women who open the book in a deep ceremony, or are they searching, or maybe they are communicating with the beyond. This is a book where it’s okay if you don’t really know what’s going on. You almost do but as in any dream state part of the fun is not really understanding and just going with the flow. Pages 13 through 15 provide the reader with a brief, tempestuous summary of what occurred in The Oneironaut 01. We know Rain is being chased by the DOD, and we know, Gauge, her best friend shows up, and we know the Ovoid Pearl (her teleporter vehicle) has been compromised. We don’t yet know what this all means.
Maybe we’re part of something larger,
more a G-5 geomagnetic astrocyclone — a gravity
well of dark matter tempest, an ugly quantum
weather anomaly (99).
In The Oneironaut 02 Wilson’s long poem traces the twists and turns of Rain’s mind as she attempts to create connections. Rain grapples with her dream state, reclaims her ability to dream and weaves this into a consciousness full of possibility. She faces compounding dangers as she attempts to evade the DOD’s enforcers.
“So what the hell am I doing? How can I be scaling
along a narrow ledge on the outside of a window?
Is this me inching toward a getaway? Truly mortifying
for an acrophobe (45).
Humans have always exalted dreams. “All men,” wrote Plutarch, “while they are awake, are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.” Pinder of Thebes, the Greek lyric poet, suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake. Wilson’s poetic writing opens up contradictions and leaves questions unanswered. The reader experiences the feeling of being roused and disoriented, on the edge of something impossible to decode.
HyRain, this world
was created by you & for you as a time sensitive crash
course glimpse into the world you are fighting to save. (217)
According to Jungian interpretation, when a fish appears to you in a dream, the animal represents insights bubbling up from the intimate, oceanic mystery of the unconscious. Wilson’s deft hand entices with this metaphor throughout:
Rain questions, Is this a fish? (48)
I am.
I am nought
in a fish. (70)There are many ways to save yourself
& all fishers. She unwinds herself
around my body. I am the rod
of Asklepios. She is remarkably soothing. (127)
Like in a dream, Wilson unfolds the impossible before her readers. As if in an altered state of (un)consciousness where our focus, range and clarity of perception are dramatically changed, Wilson provides a condensed version of mythology based on Asklepios who used the dream state to delve into both diagnosis and prognosis. On pages 176-178 Wilson offers her readers alluring and impossible intimacies. Hygeia, Greek goddess of health and cleanliness, Pythia, high priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Zeus, Asklepios all play a role in the call and answer format Wilson has chosen to “connect the dots” that indicate why Rain’s rebellion is the path of least resistance.
Wilson has chosen to use dreams as a portal to shift every one’s perceptions just a little. Rain encounters knowledge that has been marginalized, erased and/or demonized. We voluntarily become a fish in what feels like an ocean of her dream. Who is to say that dreams are not real? As Wilson herself once stated in an interview, “Do you want to use reality to explain the dream or the dream to explain reality?”
Mary Vlooswyk is poet whose writing has been published locally and internationally. She has been a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine since 2019. Her first book of poetry, On the Prairie Fringe, was self-published in 2022. Her charcoal drawing, Surrender to the Wind was published in Shanti Arts. She is an adult student of cello. An avid lover of nature, she lives with her husband on the edge of beautiful Fish Creek Provincial Park.