Reviewed @ youngpoets.ca
April 21st, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Nick Schuurman over at Young Poets, a part of The League of Canadian Poets, has posted a review of Never More There. The review highlights some strengths of the book and overall is quite positive. Below is an excerpt; you can read the review in its entirety here:
Where lies the line dividing history and folklore?
Weaving back and forth between memoir and myth, Newfoundland educator Stephen Rowe reveals the complexity of the question in Never More There, his debut collection of poetry. In this honest and unpretentious window into one man’s intimate and difficult connection to the world around him and the history that lies behind it, the line is blurred, and at times altogether removed; the cord that runs between things ordinary and surreal becomes tangled in these reflections and recollections.
Never More There forms a diverse and loosely strung together collection. These are poems about history, landscape, and the forces of nature – about folklore and family. His poems are earthy, but not campy, avoiding the typical clichés of nature poetry. Rowe captures in his poetry a sense of both the ordinariness of life and the chaotic mystery that pervades it; light, wind and seaweed are in one sense objects of myth, while at the same time entirely commonplace.
Paul Vermeersch’s “Hands”
April 15th, 2010 § 1 Comment
I’m currently reading the latest book of poetry by Paul Vermeersch, entitled The Reinvention of the Human Hand (McClelland & Stewart, 2010). I’ve been looking forward to reading this one ever since I first heard it would be released in this Spring’s M&S lineup. This is the first book of Vermeersch’s I’ve taken up though I have read poems of his in various places, but it promises to be well worth the time. I’m part way through the book, but wanted to post a spotlight entry on one poem in particular which grabbed my attention early in the collection:
“Hands”
I dreamt of finger bones
as thick as treesnakes,
of hands that possessed
a fierce, primeval strength,
and I awoke with swollen
knuckles, as though I had
smashed them hard against stone.But my bed was soft and my back
ached from the excess of comfort.
Each night, the dreams grew worse.
I saw, severed from their body,
the heavy, black hands
of a mountain silverback.
It felt like wires tightening
around my wrists as I slept.
The preoccupation with the disconnect between man and our distant, ancestral history is one of the prominent themes of this book. In this poem, the image of the human hand possessing “a fierce, primeval strength” is significant in that it harkens back to the days when humans had not yet fully developed as a species and still remained intimately connected with other primates and, it may be argued, the natural world as a whole. There is a frustration in the image of the smashing of hands against stones, which underscores this tension between man and nature, this uncomfortable reminder that we are not as far removed from apes as we might wish to believe. It has been recently pointed out that other animals, both apes and birds, have an amazing capacity for manipulation of the environment through use of objects. This creates an unique discomfort that shows
The second half of the poem takes this internal conflict a step farther. The comfort of tool use and human ingenuity has, in fact, led to a stagnant insecurity heard in the speaker’s voice. Something is calling the speaker back through the void of history, the recurring insistence that the ape is within him. This, however, is a suggestion the speaker fights: “Each night, the dreams grew worse.” In the final lines the silverback’s hands appear in an overlay with those of the human. The wires around the speaker’s wrists show Vermeersch’s adeptness at drawing the poem’s previous points together in a single image. There are flashes of frustration here, of anger and loss of identity; or rather the refining and reestablishment of a previous one, however reluctant the individual may be.
Interview with Murray
April 6th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Maisonneuve has posted on their blog an interview I recently conducted with poet and aphorist George Murray about his forthcoming book, Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms. Not sure what an aphorism has to do with a poet living in scenic St. John’s? There’s only one way to find out (see below).
It’s really a great publication. Maisonneuve provides a range of articles on a variety of relevant subject areas. Check it out if you get the chance. As far as the interview goes, below’s a teaser (you can get the full scoop here):
SR: You mentioned that many of these aphorisms were “harvested” from other poems or notes you’ve jotted down over the years, while others were written later once the collection as a whole began to take shape. It’s one thing to find jewels of image and phrase among the deeper context of a fully developed poem, but how exactly does one go about writing aphorisms from scratch? Do you consider aphorisms possible springboards to larger poems or is the reverse true: that they come from a paring down of larger pieces?
GM: Well, I suppose there are many ways to concoct an aphorism, the most common of which for me was the “epiphany”. Many of the aphorisms in Glimpse sprang fully formed into my head in reaction to something I’d seen or read or pondered. A couple stabs at the idea and there it was. Some of them came out fully formed as witticisms in speech as I spoke with friends or colleagues. I may have tinkered with the phrasing afterward, but generally the piece appeared in the spirit of the moment, as close to the original impulse as possible. Others just appeared in my notes as a thought that I presumably had one night and forgot about the next day. A third way was in looking at a failed poem with a compelling idea and distilling it.
I suppose these aphorisms could be a spring board to longer poems, but so far not for me. I hope some of them are for others who might find an idea or phrase compelling enough to run with and develop into something longer that takes it in new directions.
