Amanda Earl, Beast Body Epic

 

Feathermarked along or frost-etched
deep into and below. Stalactites
suspended into the dark and my body.
Am I destroyed or am I armoured?
Was I tough? Did I hang on against
all pronouncements?

One of the frustrations of no longer running a trade literary press is that we would have easily produced one or two further titles by Ottawa poet Amanda Earl beyond her full-length debut, Kiki (Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2014), so it was a delight to see her self-produce her latest, the book-length Beast Body Epic (Ottawa ON: AngelHousePress, 2023) [launching online on November 12]. Beast Body Epic directly responds to the author’s health crisis from a few years back, and the ongoingness of Earl’s expansive lyric and visual structure echoes, slightly, of how Dennis Cooley responded to a burst appendix, through his departures (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 2016) [see my review of such here]. As Vancouver poet and editor Elee Kraljii Gardiner writes as part of her introduction to Beast Body Epic: “She leans into visual poetry, the epic, allusion, disassociation, memoir, verse, prose, fable, allegory, and other modes in order to tell a complex story in a surprisingly succinct work. The variation is not only necessary, it’s seamless, and Amanda’s text flows with the protagonist through crisis into stasis and onward.” Gardiner is an interesting choice to write an introduction, as she knows full well about experiencing a medical crisis and exploring the same through lyric: her collection Trauma Head (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press, 2018) [see my review of such here] is “a book of poetry about [her experience with and after] an arterial dissection and stroke [.]”

Throughout her book-length epic, Earl offers a dense language of sound and play, traversing visual, prose, lyric experimentation and flourish, occasionally sketching a kind of narrative point-form. “Death spent years as the taker.” she writes, early on in the collection, “Loaded art into their conversation. / The Rot was too drunk and needy, couldn’t breathe. / She nightmare herself to sleep. / The sun ceased. // The fluttering started and didn’t stop. / First the pigeons, then the crows. / Black wing over black wing. / There’s a wolf in the labyrinth, / the Rot’s husband told her.” Earl’s lyrics and visuals are wildly performative, capable of incredible grace, flourish, anguish and precision, as required. “A nurse gives me Tylenol 3,” she writes, mid-way through the collection, “a gown / and long white compression socks. / I feel like Anne of Green Gables or / maybe Raggedy Anne, my body / stuffed full of rags, my clothes too / big for me, a little orphan girl without / parents or anyone to save her.” This is a collection that somehow manages to fly in multiple, even contradictory structural directions simultaneously, while holding together as a clear book-length work with a narrative through-line. If you haven’t been paying attention to the ongoing work of Amanda Earl [see my review of her stunning Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry anthology here], you clearly need to begin.

 

“In Winnipeg / I'll eat your leg.” — Dennis Lee

You know that poem, don’t you? From Dennis Lee’s classic Alligator Pie (Toronto ON: Macmillan, 1974). If you don’t have a copy, you should certainly get one. I doubt the book has been out of print since it originally appeared. Over the weekend, I made my way to Winnipeg for a quick overnight to launch my latest poetry collection, World’s End, (2023), a collection that immediately pre-dates my University of Calgary title, the book of smaller (2022). The publisher, ARP Books, had set up a group launch for a trio of their recent poetry titles, including Ottawa poet natalie hanna’s lisan al’asfour (2022) [see my review of such here] and Vancouver poet Nina Mosall’s Bebakhshid (2023), both of which mark their full-length debuts.

Oh, Winnipeg. It has been a while since I’ve been this way. The prior weekend I was at a festival in Corner Brook, Newfoundland [see my report on such here]. In December, I launched my Mansfield Press pandemic essay collection in Toronto with Stephen Brockwell and Amy Dennis, etc [see my report on such here] and another Toronto reading last July through Larry Sawyer/milk magazine [see my report here]. Remember all those? Before that, nothing back to February 2020, when Christine and I read in Vancouver as part of Lunch Poems at SFU [see my report on such here]. Did I ever do a report on my prior reading in Winnipeg? Going back through my posts, it does look like I toured a full thirty days back in 2006, posting all sorts of travel nonsense during that time [landing in Winnipeg; being in Winnipeg; leaving Winnipeg]. Has it really been that long since I read there? I know I’ve been at least once since to meet up with some of Christine’s aunties and Oma. Either way, I think my notes make more sense now.

natalie and I met at the airport at some ridiculously-early time for our shared flights (a brief stop-over in Toronto), as we shared hazy conversation until boarding (we were seated rather distantly on the flights themselves). I deliberately brought no reading material with me to force myself to finish the final edits on this forthcoming collection of short stories, On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press), supposedly scheduled for next fall, if I can complete these edits in time.

We landed, we made for the hotel, we lunched. We sat for a moment, to breathe. She caught her room prior to lunch, mine wasn’t ready until after. Once we were finished our lunch, she went to crash for a bit and I wandered, ending up at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, an artist run centre almost directly across the street from our hotel, where I saw some really interesting shows (that I would completely recommend). Farah Al Qasimi’s work, The Swarm, is quite stunning. Ultimately, I was heading to the big ridiculous Winnipeg sign at The Forks, which led me more than a kilometre of walking (repeatedly asking locals if I was headed the correct way), wandering in, around and through downtown in a zigzag. I caught the Portage Place mall (where I spent many hours writing in their food court, during prior visits), and saw the march of some hundreds of people protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which is devastating the Palestinian people (everyone needs to stop all the bombing, please). I wandered the corner of Portage and Main for a selfie, none of which captured either sign for proof. I walked through the train station, one of the few of those original train stations still functioning across Canada (Calgary is shuttered; Edmonton and Ottawa stations relocated years ago). Once I found it, two tourists from Philadelphia were kind enough to capture the photo of me at the sign.

Once done, I headed straight back, another kilometre-plus back into the Exchange district for the sake of Red River Books: this is one of my favourite used bookstores in Canada, and I easily mailed boxes of purchased books home from this store across those years of touring from 1997 to 2006. I made the store by 4pm, just in time to realize it had already been closed for an hour. What! And being Saturday, there was no point attempting the ArtSpace building, which houses Turnstone Press, CV2 magazine, Prairie Fire, The Manitoba Writers Guild, etcetera (I used to spend half a day on each trip wandering the building, visiting). This is when and were I first met Todd Besant, who currently runs ARP Books, during his tenure at Turnstone. Instead, I sought out a seat somewhere for the sake of some food, perhaps, and possibly a drink, landing at the Amsterdam Tea Room and Bar. I mean, I needed to be at the reading venue by 5:30pm, and it was only a couple blocks further, so there was no point in wandering back to the mall for the food court (which I did consider).

The Amsterdam was curious: a fancy bar for tea-flavoured cocktails (their menu for such was extensive; I ordered a stout, avoiding all of that). While there, I wrote postcards for the children, only to have a younger couple nearby stunned that I was writing postcards. It’s a lost art! he said. Can I take your picture writing postcards? she asked? Um, I suppose?

And did you see this? En route to the gallery: a building with a restored original front for that whole block, and new back. Completely lovely.

The reading itself was glorious! It was a small crowd, but quality. I don’t think I’d seen A.J. (Adam) Levin since 2004, when we read together at the Windsor Festival, when I launched my Palimpsest Books title (I still have copies, despite it being out of print). K.I. (Karen) Press looked no different than she had ever done. Why doesn’t she age? And it was great to finally meet (in-person) Winnipeg poets Julian Day, melanie brannagan and above/ground press author Melanie Dennis Unrau. Dennis Cooley, as well, was his usual self, his pulse of electrical energy just there beneath the surface. The benefit, also, of those latter four being above/ground press subscribers, I was able to hand them three envelopes each, which did lighten my load considerably. And did you know cam scott [did you see my review of his latest?] is part of aceart as well? I hadn’t met him yet, either. Oh, he's so good. We’ve been discussing doing a chapbook together for some time now.

Christine’s two maternal aunties were also there! They live in Winnipeg, after all. It was lovely to see them.

The last time I was at aceart, Winnipeg’s glorious artist-run centre, it was in a different location. For reasons unknown, Sylvia Legris thought I should be part of an art auction they were running back in the fall of 1999, and, given I’d recently won the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Prize for Most Promising Writer (in any genre) in Canada under 30 (their only non-cash prize, but included two free tickets to anywhere Air Canada flew), I was able to use one of those tickets to fly into Winnipeg for the sake of that auction. I stayed with Dennis Cooley, brought along terrible artwork and spent the evening working the bar at the event. At least when Karen Connelly won the same prize nearly a decade earlier, she used her tickets for a bit more purpose: flying to Thailand, where she spent a year composing her Governor General’s Award-winning travel memoir, Touch the Dragon (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1992).

natalie hanna does occupy an interesting space in Ottawa literary circles: despite this being her full-length debut, she’s been active for years (with a break mid-way for the sake of law school and articling), even back to the second half of the 1990s, when she was involved with running readings at Mother Tongue Books (a series, if I recall correctly, organized with Stephanie Bolster) and above/ground press even published a chapbook-length long poem of hers as an issue of the long poem magazine STANZAS. The reading was straightforward enough (and we were all amazing, I’ll have you know), but what was intriguing was Andrew Lee prompting a panel conversation between the three of us at the end of the event. He opened with a question, and then asked if we had questions for each other (I didn’t realize we’d had homework).

Nina, on her part, immediately jumped at the opportunity, and pulled out a whole list of questions she’d prepared (citing that, as a librarian, this was something she was quite good at). Her questions were interesting, although I made a point of prompting her to answer each one as well, after natalie and I had. After a handful of Nina’s questions, I pointed out that all of her questions seemed to be structural (ie: variations on form, as opposed to questions around content), which prompted me to ask her how her poems begin. She hadn’t even realized her direction. I feel seen! she said, startled.

K.I. (Karen) Press

All in all, a very fine event, a very fine trip. Thank you, co-readers, and to everyone at ARP Books: Todd, Irene (in absentia) and Andrew. Thank you.

myself reading! photo by Andrew Lee, ARP Books

Dennis Cooley, body works

 

quite the you

quite the me
thod, the art
hritic shoulders

the thud of door—

one big shudder
one bent shoulder

drags the week in & out,
the ends bedraggled

he is a carpet hung from winter
whack whack
an old woman knocking
the cold off course

of course we rehearse
our methods and lists of hers & his
         trionics as they inolve

the bones in a wrist
that spin & threaten
        to pop

Given the ways through which beloved Winnipeg poet, editor, critic, teacher, anthologist, theorist, mentor and publisher Dennis Cooley has worked as a poet over the years, the notion of a trajectory of his writing as seen through a sequence of published book-length poetry collections is less than straightforward; certainly far less straightforward than anyone else I’m aware of. His published work exists as less than a straight line than a complex tapestry, often producing chapbooks and books excised from lengthy manuscripts composed across years (and even decades), offering selected book-sized collections awash with myriad threads, some of which connect to some works over others, all of which spread out endlessly from whatever central point where his work once began.

Cooley’s latest collection is body works (Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2023), and the acknowledgments offers that “Earlier versions of some of these poems have appeared in books (sunfall, soul searching, passwords) […].” For readers more familiar with elements of his recent poetry titles—including The Bestiary (Turnstone Press, 2020), cold-press moon (Turnstone Press, 2020) and The Muse Sings (At Bay Press, 2020) [see my triptych review of such here]—it might be less obvious as to the details of these earlier titles, which refer to his poetry collections Sunfall: new and selected poems (Toronto ON: House of Anansi Press, 1996) and Soul Searching (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1987), and his travel journal Passwords: Transmigrations between Canada and Europe (Kiel, Germany: l&fVerlag, 1996). I’ve written repeatedly over the years on the notion that Cooley works up projects into potentially hundreds of manuscript pages before selecting something that might be more of a publishable shape and size, and honestly, there can’t be that many contemporary poets not only working at his rate of production (I don’t know an exact count, but I’d think he’s published well more than two dozen full-length poetry collections since the late 1970s) that are simultaneously working on poetry manuscripts across such a lengthy scope of time. Or is this simply Cooley returning to earlier ideas, and pulling at older threads for the sake of seeing them further? There were pieces published in his recent The Bestiary, for example, that first appeared in print in the 1990s, and one might recall that two of the three acknowledgments for The Muse Sings also included passwords and Soul Searching, which may even suggest he might be working both: extending ongoing threads and returning back to picking up what had long been set aside. Or are multiple manuscripts sitting simultaneously on his desk, allowing him to prod and poke at various at different points of his attention?

Before even seeing the acknowledgments for body works, the poems here did remind of some of the subject matter of passwords: writing on the body and its limitations, as he had been negotiating some health concerns during that time (there’s a whole long stretch of prose journal in that collection composed directly from his hospital bed). As he has done with multiple poetry collections over the years, Cooley swirls his poems around a particular subject or idea, exhaustively writing poems that explore and examine, eventually compiling a manuscript from the excess (other examples include: his 1999 poetry title Irene [see my Globe & Mail review of such, shockingly still online, here], composed around his mother; his 2003 title seeing red, offering Dracula poems; and his 2013 title the stones [see my review of such here], writing poems on his beloved prairie landscape). Set in six sections of short poems—“for the time being,” “disjointed,” “the body abroad,” “the body politic,” “body works” and “the heart of the matter”—body works offers threads of multiple other interests and concerns familiar to even the occasional readers of Cooley’s work, from fairy tale characters to talk of his father, playfully referencing his namesake homonym, coolies, and his descriptive stretch across that familiar prairie landscape. In all, there’s less of a sense of his usual playful lyric bounce across this collection than a selected precision, one that focuses his usual leaps into something more purposeful, deliberate; as though the play is not the thing but, instead, a particular kind of navigation. “where she runs the air is forked,” he writes, referencing a limp in the poem “she pulls up lame,” “and filled with misgivings [.]” In a poetic style that often moves at breakneck speed in one hundred directions at once, seeing a lyric that moves at half that speed in only forty or fifty directions, at least for Cooley, feels akin to slowing down.

Cooley writes of and around the body, utilizing the core of his subject to articulate memory, utilize sound and cadence, all of which is propelled across the length and breadth of his lone and long-standing prairie syntax. Through playful swirls around the subject of the body, there are certainly ways one might compare this particular work by Dennis Cooley to the late Toronto poet bpNichol’s classic Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography (Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 1988), a manuscript around the body that was only published in full more than twenty years later, as organ music: parts of an autobiography (Black Moss Press, 2012) [my review for Arc Poetry Magazine seems to have fallen offline]. Given some of the poems Cooley wrote in passwords were initially prompted by health issues something that might have prompted Nichol as well? Cooley writes of a limp and even a gouty foot, writing the body as spiritual and physical space in all its glory, absurdities, strengths and occasional failings.

As I’ve writ in other places, Cooley has long constructed poetry collections around a central core of an idea or subject, swirling his lyric around an endless array of fragments, fractals and perspectives, and his book on the body simultaneously and in turn explore the internal and philosophic, the theological and the purely physical. As the back cover offers: “Here, the body is neither a site of conflict nor a place of spiritual weakness, but instead a vessel of experience that works in harmony with the intellect.” This is a collection by a mature poet nearing eighty years old, after all, although it would be curious to understand the balance between the poems first composed during his forties and fifties to ones composed more recently. “its time is done,” he writes, to open the poem “time’s up,” “& from time to time, / yours is too— / right on time, it would seem, / you got off on the wrong foot.” It is curious to see Cooley’s usual wild flurry of energy and syntax slow for the sake of pause, composing a meditative hush held but not overwhelmed by his usual breathless, breakneck lyric speed, one that allows for a lyric of accumulated, sequenced moments of pure, almost breathless, thought. As the second half of the poem “where we unravel,” that offers:

             your bones, my father,
do not fall into meadows of light
nor waters more supple than skin

the Estevan City cemetery the sound
        clay and gravel make
              the scrape of concrete
     [posture is normally upright
      the bright blood broken

  :  :  :  :  :
full fathom five thy father lies
                nebulae & carbon