Fields of Light and Stone
by Angeline Schellenberg
University of Alberta Press (2020)

Fields of Light and Stone is a book of poems through which Angeline Schellenberg pays homage to her elders, their complicated histories, and her connections to them. The book is dedicated to “all who seek comfort in story/ with love for these imperfect saints” and from the start, Schellenberg connects herself to these “imperfect saints” through the land she grew up on and her grandparents’ stories.

Half the book is dedicated to her maternal grandparents and the other half to her paternal and throughout memories, biblical quotes, and religious ceremonies as well as letters and historical documents create and inform the poems that are personal and detailed, but also rich with deep contemplation.

“Everything there is to say” is her opening poem, which begins with “Everything there is to say/ has already been said about trees.” and what a grand statement, but then to go on and say more, and link “The Siberian elms (like my ancestors)” to those who “would not stay in one place.” From this beginning the poems move through time and memories, as if the narrator is sitting by the bedside of each of her grandparents and while listening to their stories, interweaves her own memories and lived tales. The book ends on “The First Trees” as if trees are structures creating a framework for these poems to live within the bounds of, “Lighter than oak or regret, aspen crates are perfect/ for carrying the books our ancestors/ have yet to write.”

Schellenberg’s careful layering of moments is captured in “The Night of the Fair” where, after being caught in a rainstorm, “we ran to her condo,/ mini-donuts dripping/ and sat four-generations deep” there they talked of Tsarist Russia “and my husband’s bald chest peeking/ out of grandma’s mint-green robe.” Throughout the first-half the grandparents letters are used as touchstones, and journals as historical documents.

Sometimes shifts in pronouns “you” and “I” made me pause, read more slowly to discover who was being referenced and what the clues were. Not all stories comes easy, as in “Between Seed and Harvest”: “After great-grandma dies and you marry her sister/…she will try to starve your daughter and leave/ your family broken./ There are no fairy-tale endings.” The you here, her grandfather.

This folding of the narrator’s life and her family’s weaves throughout in poems like “Deep Breathing” where the narrator gives birth, and that breathing is equated or recalls the grandmother’s last breaths.

A narrator with sometimes childlike-wonder and adoration of these elders moves through the relics of their lives. In the second half, her Oma and Opa are so much a part of the young Schellenberg’s life and stories shape those “Fields of Light” : “She perches on the edge/ of a piano bench/ in a Field of Light.// It’s 1919 in a Ukraine/ before famine and Oma/ is singing.”

Later when the Oma dies, the poet wonders, knowing her Oma will not meet her future children as she faces death: “is that sheen/ the morphine, or the rheum of angels?”

A deep and contemplative book that shuns linear telling favouring voice, and brief recollections from here and here and there and lets them resonate, like keepsakes – letters and recipes, her Opa’s German bible – through shifts in time and perspective.

Yvonne Blomer’s The Last Show on Earth, her fifth book, came out with Caitlin Press in 2022. Yvonne’s poetry books include As if a Raven (Palimpsest Press, 2015), and the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press, 2017 and 2021). Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur (Palimpsest Press, 2017) is her travel memoir exploring body, time, and travel. Yvonne is the past Poet Laureate of Victoria, B.C., and the past Artistic Director of the weekly reading series Planet Earth Poetry. She lives on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) people. Yvonne mentors and teaches in poetry and prose and has students zooming in from across North America.

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intertidal: poems from the littoral zone
by Zoe Dickinson
Raven Chapbooks (2022)

The title alone of this slim volume of astonishing poems says much – both intertidal – that is in the between zone of high and low tides – and littoral – that is on the shore. But don’t you misread littoral a little, and see the poems here are literal, as in a literal translation of what it means to live: settler, woman, human, on the shores of the Great and Mighty Pacific on the lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples? And also, to be both between and upon the shore and its ever-shifting state, is to be in these poems which by god are ecological, yes, and pastoral in their view and their vision.

The book begins with “I’d like to start by acknowledging” a poem that takes the land acknowledgments we all do, and we hope we do with care and deep consideration, and really holds it up to the light. The poem notes the facts of our bodies living and thriving on the lands of Indigenous people who are not thriving as they could be, nay would be, without us. It is a brave and bold poem in which Zoe Dickinson’s voice is strong and clear, “I’d like to acknowledge that I mouth words of acknowledgement/ like a spell to ward off colonialism, like/ a cloak to cover how comfortable I am here/ living my life/ on top of an ongoing struggle for survival.”

Poems that follow this strong opening, focus on creatures of the littoral zone, as well as birds, and insects and humans and how we observe and how exist side by side. In the human and the oceanic world – things can be seen in metaphor and in parallel. Can be learned, even, from theses wrack zones. The narrator in these poems is a close observer, and she wonders and questions her seeing and her understanding.

In her poem “Singularity” a seagull approaches, “as the gull saunters toward my French fry” and by the end, after noting and near-entering the bird’s deep gullet and wide maw, she wonders, “how/ can I escape/ the singular pull/ of that hunger.”

Poems throughout are rich with this kind of question, this close observation laid alongside the human wondering and taking in what these sea creatures know instinctively. In “anemone advice” the poem begins, “stand still long enough/ to be mistaken for a flower – / paralyze them/ with their own assumptions.” Yes, my feminist brain says, be tough, hide that strength, trick or disavow, and then pounce and use it.

Dickinson does this again in “nudibranch” and I celebrate her poems and her voice deeply for it, “well, that’s one way to deal with fear:/ instead of getting harder,/ cast off the shell/…what is armour/ but participation/ with the predator?”

Here is a first book, a first chapbook which is the award-winning book for Raven Chapbooks series for 2022. Zoe Dickinson has crafted a collection of lyrical poems both playful and serious that stay with the life forms of the littoral zone but which ignite into pithy, smart and thoughtful statements and understandings of the natural and human worlds. Poems of such brilliance and deep attention can change its reader, just as the mosquito is changed by the blood it takes from us, and we, inadvertently “nourish a constellation of blooms// is proof that even the worst pest / fulfills a purpose in the ecosystem / despite ourselves.”

Yvonne Blomer is the author of The Last Show on Earth (Caitlin Press, 2022) and the editor of Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds and Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin Press, 2020 and 2017)

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Waves
by Diane Girard
Volume Publishing (2021)

What was I expecting inside this simple cover on a seemingly self-published book? I don’t mind admitting I recognized my own prejudice as I opened this book, which was quickly washed away by Diane Girard’s facility with telling tales. As an author of fiction, frankly, it’s difficult to understand how someone who writes with such fluidity and insight into people can remain virtually unknown except by her local Kitchener-area literati.

That first story convinced me, as I have a family member who battles addiction. Her protagonist in Thirty-Day Wonder seemed to verbalize everything I had ever learned about their condition. All it would have taken is to change the names and the tale could have told of my own family member instead. That is how real her work is, and how authentic her characters are. But could she maintain her grip on me through the entire collection?

Waves is a collection of vignettes; it’s easy to imagine are pulled from real life experiences. The characters are so authentic that the reader can visualize sitting in the room with them as they share their tales. Diane Girard presents as something of an enigma. My assumption is that she simply hasn’t been discovered yet. That should change dramatically if enough readers are made aware of her debut collection.

I was immediately impressed by this collection of short tales, both for her facility with language and for her deep observations of the motivation of her character’s experience. Yes, there are fresh characters in every tale, and each of them is presented with new problems. While these stories are quiet on the surface, each has an undertow that exerts a pull on the reader’s imagination. In other words, the title of this volume is appropriate as each story exhibits the energy of waves with their undertow.

Lori Hahnel says Girard treats her characters, “with kindness, with humour and always with respect.” This is true, but there is something even more important about these stories. Each one reads as so thoroughly authentic that every character feels like they are someone that you know or are bound to meet. Most of these tales deal with people experiencing some gritty trial in their lives, but Girard’s connection to their inner thoughts is both clean and brilliant. It may be a woman resisting her addiction to drugs as in Thirty-Day Wonder, a worker who worries about a cranky; and independent elder on her care list in Unlocked, or someone who counsels a friend who is leaving her husband in The Prevalence of Chocolate. All of these stories are told with a depth of heart that is rare for a first collection.

Are there any stumbles along the way? Yes, there are a few. Her story of an ex-soldier rings true except for the portrait of his PTSD within the tale Unlocked, which ironically lacks the emotional connection to make it believable. It isn’t difficult to predict the ending to Peach Fuzz and Sunflowers, as Rosalie mistakes the young man paid to do her yard work for her long-passed husband with an even more predictable, but less believable, result. Yet, each story opens with an unusual setting, the dialogue of the characters is ever-so authentic, and the endings usually give us a satisfying twist. Overall, this is a remarkable first collection.

Sharon Berg writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, book reviews, and articles. She has published poems in periodicals across the world, as well as several books of poetry, chapbooks, and short fiction collections.

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