Danielle LaFrance, Verbal Violence

 

From:
Date:
Subject: [Internal]
To:

            _________________________________________________

there is no position if not written down. all ways storied, all
ways factoid. 

what unifies the hadith of policies. Who provides what time
to: break disrespectful responses: report serious comportment:
develop diaphoresis in advance of a pool forms not safe for
work. 

who sedulously avoids all political discussion in the workplace:
people who manage other people are concerned with what
works: 

a migration of orphaned socks discharges who, what evidences
of good intentions over thousands of years over who,
what is every one if not forced thingification. 

what is beyond the point of instruction to decipher needle
fingering, double-talking, incorporating gravings. 

such great utopian wrath!

The latest from Vancouver poet Danielle LaFrance, following Species Branding (Vancouver BC: CUE, 2010) [see my review of such here], Friendly + Fire (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2016) [see my review of such here], JUST LIKE I LIKE IT (Talonbooks, 2019) [see my review of such here] and #postdildo (Talonbooks, 2022), is the poetry title Verbal Violence (Talonbooks, 2026), a collection that “unravels, dissects, and shreds the language of the professional managerial class.” LaFrance explores and examines the specific dehumanizing language of business, comparable to Canadian poet Syd Zolf’s explorations through office language in their remarkable Human Resources (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2007) [see my review of such here], both titles attempting, in their own ways, to reclaim the human condition of and through language, class and stripped meanings. One can see this title the direct result of recent declarations around the destruction of Gaza to wildfires, as governments and politicians have been playing fast and loose with language through misrepresentation, dehumanization and outright fabrication. “about this / class structure.” LaFrance writes, mid-way through the collection, “neoliberal / institutions were / never neutral until / the burden of / oppression. hand / in glove no one / told hamas don’t / fit the picture.”

There is a way that LaFrance’s ongoing work fits deep within and extends a language tradition of social justice and resistance, specifically in and around Vancouver, centred around (but not the exclusive purview of) The Kootenay School of Writing—with other contemporary practitioners including ryan fitzpatrick, Stephen Collis, Jeff Derksen, Christine Leclerc, Scott Inniss, Cecily Nicholson, Kevin Davies, Rita Wong and Marie AnnHarte Baker, among others—a practice that not only emerges from those ethical structures, but one that furthers conversation around and through contemporary political crises. These are poems fearlessly composed, harnessing a fiercely intellectual rage around settler colonialism and violence, composed with swagger, gesture and an unrelenting humanity. Through a book dedicated “for every one, / mostly for miscreants,” Verbal Violence is structured through repeated loops of “From:,” “Date:,” “Subject:” and “To:,” as LaFrance writes, early in the collection: “in this day, that age, who said who will be in who’s sacred place when who is rerouted to a community mailbox. what is required at this roaring time to communicate critical taunts beginning with a hard g, finished off by a hand-held bubble machine.” As LaFrance’s “ENDNOTES.v3.pdf” at the end of the collection opens:

In 2021 an unadulterated disdain for work as such emerged anew. Back to business, the order of things, cushioned by new investment in nineties pop psychology turned “wellness culture” amid a global pandemic, and then, in 2024, the last vestige of belief in any liberal democratic institution was put to rest with the professional managerial class’s shameful complicity in the destruction of Gaza, the newest development in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Wrapped around these time signatures, a stranglehold, was the making of this account.

Spotlight series #56 : Danielle LaFrance

The fifty-sixth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Vancouver poet and editor Danielle LaFrance.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks and Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams.

The whole series can be found online here.

Danielle LaFrance, JUST LIKE I LIKE IT

Instead, this tongue gathers in the expectation of a meal

Small-talk mastication. Never finally deciding

On where or what to eat

Stop pretending it’s not there. The moon’s cuticle

Oh at least bad metaphors cannot be ignored

I’m tired of loving it. It is actually cheaper than cocaine

Desperation is a valuable commodity. It waters and feeds me

And I keep seeding it. I keep binging it (“POWER BOTTOM’S DREAM”)

Vancouver writer Danielle LaFrance’s latest, JUST LIKE I LIKE IT (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2019), is a book that revels in failure, whether around writing, power or ambition, and exploring ideas of obsession, anxiety and resignation even against a foundation of a fiery ‘kicking against the pricks.’ As the poem “VII” from the opening section “IT MAKES ME ILIAD” (a poem-section that reworks the ancient text), “JUST LIKE I LIKE WHEN BOTH / SIDES AGREE,” writes: “Depression  is the  natural  state in  times like  these. & the / fault, of course,  is not  in the  stars, but in  ourselves.” JUST LIKE I LIKE IT is LaFrance’s third trade poetry title, after Friendly + Fire (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2016) [see my review of such here] and Species Branding (Vancouver BC: CUE, 2010), and there is an emotional rawness and vulnerability reminiscent of another recent Talonbooks title, Calgary poet Nikki Reimer’s My Heart Is a Rose Manhattan (Talonbooks, 2019) [see my review of such here], but one that also revels in guttural sound and image, and a swagger that refuses to slow or tone down even when off-balance. Her book’s title seems to offer itself both as a challenge and admission, set in all caps. Is this shouting, or simply holding firm? Perhaps both; perhaps tired of being asked or corrected, repeatedly. What appeals here is in the rawness of the material, and the ways in which LaFrance opens up the possibilities of what poetry can or should be doing, and could become, such as this section of the poem-section “IT SOUNDS LIKE A SMALL SCUM,” that reads:

BANG!

SOME KIND OF

CITY, SOME KIND

OF WOMAN JUST

APPEARS. MAYBE

MEMORIES OF THE

THINGS I SAW

YESTERDAY, OR

THE DAY BEFORE

[…] I DON’T THINK

ABOUT WHAT

COMES NEXT

IT JUST POPS UP