Kate Sutherland, The Bones Are There

 

The Map

We were led astray by the unreliable map
Had we sailed E by N instead of SE by E
we should have reached the American mainland
in eight days. The map must have been false
We must have skipped across the so-called
Juan de Gama’s land. I suspect the gentlemen
who drew up these charts obtained their knowledge
from visions. It is an easy matter to sit in a warm room
setting down on paper distorted accounts
and guesswork. If they must exercise imagination
let them keep their reveries to themselves
We did not find land there, not the least trace of it
Not birds, driftwood or seaweed. By July 14^th
half our water was gone

Toronto writer and lawyer Kate Sutherland’s latest book is The Bones Are There (Toronto ON: Book*hug, 2020), a continuation of some of the work of her debut poetry collection, How to Draw a Rhinoceros (Book*hug, 2016) [see my review of such here], writing out an exploration of lost species utilizing an array of archival material. “We cannot now hope to procure a living solitaire,” she writes, as part of the second section, “though every part / of the skeleton could doubtless be found in the caverns of Rodrigues [.]” As the back cover of The Bones Are There attests: “Zigzagging across the globe, Kate Sutherland’s fourth book is poetry by the way of collage: pieced-together excerpts from travellers’ journals, ships’ logs, textbooks and manuals, individual testimony, and fairy and folk tales that tell stories of the extinction of various species, and of the evolution of human understanding of—and culpability for—the phenomenon.” The Bones Are There is, as one might expect, a book of acknowledgements, archaeological searches and of writing out the bones of the lost, and the dead. As she writes, further on in the second section:

It is very hard to catch them in the woods but easy in open places

As soon as they’re caught they shed tears without crying
and refuse all sustenance till they die

Composed in three sections—“Beasts of the Sea,” “The Bones Are There” and “Familiar”—the first of which appeared as a chapbook through knife│fork│books in 2018 [see my review of such here], I find it curious her use of punctuation, such as in the short lyric poems in the first section (an example being “The Map,” above). Whereas the periods within the lines speak to a structure of sentences, as do her use of capitals, she doesn’t include a period at the end, suggesting the rhythmic and line-break might be enough to suggest the end of one line or phrase before the beginning of another. The effect is curious, and quite subtle, such as in the opening of “Blue Foxes,” another poem from the opening section, that reads: “We were far too busy killing blue foxes / knocking them down with the axe, stabling them / The more of them we killed, the more / malevolent and audacious became the others [.]”

I do find it interesting the shifts in Sutherland’s writing, moving from two short story collections both published by Thistledown Press—Summer Reading (1995) and All In Together Girls (2007)—to two poetry titles-to-date (published by Book*hug) that focus on extinction and the archive, writing out elements of evolution, ecology, exploration, journal writing, and the (as the back cover of The Bones Are There writes) “legacies of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and misogyny, charting the ways in which they juxtapose one another while impacting the natural order of things.” Her poems move from those in the voice of those exterminating species as they move across new landscapes to a series of reports on the dead, executed and collected. There are elements of her writing that are reminiscent of other poetry titles constructed out of journals, from George Bowering’s George, Vancouver (Weed/Flower Press, 1970) to K.I. Press’ Pale Red Footprints (Pedlar Press, 2001) or even to Lisa Robertson’s The Weather (New Star Books, 2001). She utilizes the archive; not as an end, but as a way in which to examine, articulate and critique. Sutherland writes the ways in which others, from animals to people, particularly women, are victimized through the conquest of capitalism, colonialism and conquest. As Sutherland writes as part of the third section:

About midsomer last. Olive Barthram fell out with Joan Jorden and devised to afflict her with witcheries. First Olive sent three toads to trouble Joan in her bed, not suffering her to rest. The first, being teased out into the middle of the chamber, returned and sat croaking on her bedside until thrown from the window. Within a few days another came and vexed her and it was taken and burnt. After came the third which Joan was counselled to burn herself. Going downstairs to do so, she was violently flung to the foot of the stairs and lay there a while for dead. Simon Fox put the toad into the fire and when it began to burn, a flame arose where the toad lay when Joan fell. The flame grew so great that it seemed to them to endanger the house, yet no hurt was done.

Executed, 1599

On October 13, 2020, the publication date for this new collection, her publisher posted an interview with Sutherland, where she speaks of, among other subjects, some of what she’s currently working on, furthering her critiques of extinction through the lens of the archive:

I’m writing a sequence of poems about climate change using as my vocabulary only words that appear in the 1818 edition of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Climate change is a predictable preoccupation for me given its role in the extinctions I explore and lament in The Bones Are There. And Frankenstein is proving a generative frame for thinking about it because of obvious connections with the theme of the novel and the conditions under which it was written (in the Year Without a Summer that followed upon the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora), but also because of the ways that the climate crisis of our time can be linked to emerging scientific and economic discourses of that time.

Ongoing notes: Meet the Presses (part three,

[the view from my table]

Further to my recent participation in Toronto’s Meet the Presses’ annual Indie Literary Market [see part one of my notes here; part two of my notes here], here are another few items I collected at said event.

Toronto ON: Toronto writer Kate Sutherland continues her exploration of animals real and imaged through her chapbook Beasts of the Sea (knife│fork│books, 2018), something the author biography references as well, presenting a bit more context for this current work: “She is currently at work on a new collection of poems on the theme of extinction.” Following her debut poetry title, How to Draw a Rhinoceros (Book*hug, 2016), the poems in Beasts of the Sea are similarly packed with an exploration based on both research and curiosity, moving through a sequence of dense lyric poems that point themselves toward magical beasts and pure scientific data. I am curious to see where this manuscript leads.

SIGNS OF LAND

Red and white sea nettles, a large mass

of reed grass, various species of seaweed

adrift. Rock ducks and flocks of gulls

The frequent occurrence of animals

not commonly met in the open sea: sea otters

compelled by the structure of their hearts

to keep close to shore. We should have made it

in three or four days, ten at the most

had we taken advantage of the plainest signs

of nearness of land. We saw land as early as July 15^th

but because I was first to announce it

and it was not so clear a picture could be made of it

the announcement was dismissed. Six wees

after leaving Avacha we reached land

Toronto ON: Another title from Desert Pets Press is Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia’s chapbook LILITH (2018), a collection of short lyrics imbued with an undercurrent of soft anxiety attempting to seek out a sequence of calm. Sometimes the poems in LILITH achieve that calm, but the anxiety remains, ever-present, even if it remains muted, however hard the narrator and narration might attempt to push their way over and through, to what lies beyond. With the occasional light at the end of the tunnel, Valencia articulates some dark lyric stretches, domestic patters and rough patches; I am hoping both poems and narrators finally make it.

Phobos

As you enter my living room, there is a black office desk in the far right corner. A black laptop with a broken screen sits beside a fingerprint-stained monitor above a crumb-infested keyboard. A grey scanner sits beside them, the top of it is cluttered with unfinished illustrations, my children’s drawings, old books needing to be put away. Two worn-down moleskine notebookskeep the papers in place. They are deep green, crammed with future waste paper and one possibility. A cracked mug adorned with a faded image of Stanley Kubrick waits by the keyboard with a cold layer of over-sugared coffee inside of it. A collection of dusty race medals hangs on the wall in front of the desk and below it resides a salvaged dollhouse. The dollhouse stores the overflow from the desk: papers, kids crayons, unread pamphlets/materials, and one vintage bowler hat that was used once in a community theatre production of Waiting for Godot.

There’s a soft tabby cat purring on my lap.

I’ve lost something.

Kate Sutherland, How to Draw a Rhinoceros

CONSERVATION

I.

Almost 50 animals among extinction efforts greatest hunted increase is more of our rhinoceroses since southern this time than their 14,000 success stories short savannas protected population of numbers law inhabited international grass discovered currently by 1895 Africa

II.

Anti-poaching alone but dramatically equip for horn however illegal implement increase killed 1800s law medicinal need no number over 1,000 patrols poaching saved species successes train this tougher value was touted thought scientific story provide public needed late idea increasing from 2007 continues animal awareness

Some might know her through her two collections of short fiction—Summer Reading (1995) and All In Together Girls (2007)—both published by Thistledown Press, but Toronto writer Kate Sutherland is now the author of a poetry collection as well—How to Draw a Rhinoceros (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2016). How to Draw a Rhinoceros is a collage of narrative lyrics alongside denser poem-fragments, all stitched together from a variety of rhinoceros sources from the middle ages to the Victorian Era, “The Rhinoceros / or Unicorn of Holy Writ” (“O’BRIEN’S FOUR SHOWS”), and hunters such as Teddy Roosevelt, King George V and Ernest Hemingway, to the more contemporary trade in horn artifacts. The poems are constructed from extensive reading and research, and an awareness of a creature not often portrayed in contemporary poetry (I suspect centaurs and mermaids, even beyond lions, cats and dogs, achieve more ink), although I still have the plastic rhinoceros that accompanied Fredericton writer and artist Joe Blades’ poetry chapbook, Rummaging for rhinos (Ottawa, ON: Pooka Press, 1995). “Wombwell’s Royal Menagerie / hit the road in 1805 / not the first, but the biggest / fifteen brightly-painted caravans / to Pidcock’s four,” she writes, in part two, “George Wombwell (1777-1850),” of the sequence, “THE WILD BEAST MEN.” She continues:

this year his elephant died

upon arrival at Bartholomew Fair

his chief rival posted a sign:

the only living elephant at the fair

Wombwell countered: Come see

the only dead elephant at the fair!

and the crowd crushed in

Sutherland’s collection is a bit of a mix, from the playful, dense and inventive to narrative poems that rely a bit too heavily on research, but most of the poems live in the centre of those two sides, showcasing a perfect blend of form and function. Certainly, there are pieces here that I want more from, such as the aforementioned “THE WILD BEAST MEN”—one of a series of poems that do little more than offer me what I might be able to discover otherwise, but most of the poems here take elements of that research as a jumping-off point. The poem “GOING, GOING, GONE,” for example, utilizes her research and plays with it, instead of simply repeating facts, offering a list of the possible, even as they dissolve and disappear before our eyes. The first two of twenty “Lots” write:

Lot 1

Small bird-form rhinoceros horn cup, 17^th century

Lot 2

Rhinoceros horn libation cup with magnolia in fitted wooden

            stand, late 17^th century

The base has a magnolia bud broken off and reaffixed with glue

            adhesive

Really, the poems in Sutherland’s How to Draw a Rhinoceros that feel the most effective are those propelled not by narrative, but by the language, using elements of research and narrative as tools in which to further the sight and sound of the words themselves, such as “DÜRER’S RHINOCEROS,” “GREAT FAMILY OF GIANTS,” “OFFICIALS SAID” and “CONSERVATION,” among others. As well, the “Clara” poems that close the collection are quite wonderful, and reminiscent, slightly, of some of Stephen Brockwell’s “voice” poems (or even more playful versions of Michael Harris’ “Death and Miss Emily” poems). They include this short delight, riffing famously off “Romeo and Juliet”:

CLARA INSCRIBES THE SCRIBES

O rhinoceros! who dares to name thee?

Rhinoceros of all rhinoceroses

A rhinoceros by any other name

would be as fleet

A rhinoceros is a rhinoceros is a rhinoceros

You, of course, are a rhinoceros

but were always a rhinoceros

Hooray, say the rhinoceroses

every rhinoceros has its horn

unless it doesn’t

What becomes interesting in the collection as a whole is in seeing how the accumulation of different forms and perspectives effectively form together into a singular portrait, suggesting that the book’s title isn’t metaphoric but indeed, literal. This book is Sutherland’s portrait of a rhinoceros, sketched fully and fleshed out in a blend of fine lines and rough edges.