Meghan Kemp-Gee, Nebulas

my review of North Vancouver poet, teacher and scriptwriter Meghan Kemp-Gee’s second collection, Nebulas (Coach House Books, 2026), is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. catch my review of her full-length debut, The Animal in the Room (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2023) here.

the city on the edge of forever, : Victoria, part three,

Okay, so I clearly had too many adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here; see part two here]. I thought I could contain it all in one post, so there you go.

Saturday, April 25: My final morning in Victoria, with a noon check-out, so I had to get my bags figured out. My high school pal Jennifer (who originally collected me from the airport on day one of this trip) arrived for the sake of my many bags, and we headed out to get coffee and sandwiches. There were rowboats in the water. The sky was an incredible blue. We drove out for sandwiches to a place she likes, realizing we were parking right by that art gallery that was closed on Thursday, when I wandered that same way, able to go into the "multi-media debut solo exhibition by Mila Rio," You Do Not Have to Be Good (again, a line from this Mary Oliver poem). Rio is layering animal imagery in a really interesting way, from paintings to works of felt across frames, stitching ideas together that intrigue and slightly trouble the imagination. I hadn't realized until after that we had actually met the artist, sitting in the space, so that was pretty cool. I think Rio is doing some interesting work. If you are in Victoria, you have until May 28th to see this small show, and I would recommend it.

Sandwiches by the water, the low American hills in Washington State across the bay. Sandwiches, as we talked about who we still knew from high school (Glengarry District High School, class of 1989), and where they might be. Who we still spoke to. Where has everyone gone? A handful still around home, while others (that we know of) scattered across Ottawa, Germany, Lethbridge, Texas, etcetera. The long arm of Glengarry wanderings.

Mile Zero, where I think I might even have visited with Joe Blades, back in the spring of 1998 (we attended that year's League of Canadian Poets AGM, and launched a five-poet anthology we were in, that he edited/published). A photo, most likely. I wonder where that might be? Mile Zero: the end of a poem by Robert Kroetsch, naturally. Or is this the beginning?

Afterwards, Jen offered to keep my bags in her car until the evening event, and she dropped me at Miniature World, a museum near enough to the reading venue that I knew I could catch this, sit somewhere, and then head off to the event fairly easily. This place is magnificent and everyone who goes to Victoria must go there immediately. When I looked on a map, it seemed close enough and intriguing enough, and I thought, why not?

Some of the battlesites were pretty cool, as were the occasional trains, but the best part had to be a wrap-around single train-line heading from Canada's west coast through to the east, catching most of the main stops along the way across the period of some of the original founding of our country's national rail. Victoria, Calgary, Regina, Toronto. Although it jumped immediately from there to Quebec City and a generic "The Maritimes," which I thought a bit nonsense (I wanted to complain, but the end of the tour leads one to the street, and not back to the front desk). It was a remarkable display, either way. But I wanted to see my house!

And then the lights went low! And the train lights went on, and the train whistled through! And then it was daylight again, the sunlight lifting up across the whole stretch of country.

There were historic European and American battlesites, fairy tale settings, circus city-scenes and a whole room of dollhouses. A stretch of buildings and totem poles reminiscent of the Great Hall in Gatineau's Museum of History (formerly the Museum of Civilization, which is a better name, despite what former Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks).

No gift shop, which was admittedly a surprise (and disappointing; I would have picked up something, at least). From there, I wandered slightly, collecting postcards (and a block further, stamps to accompany), before landing at the Sticky Wicket, "Vancouver Island's biggest pub" (it's not always about size, fella), attached to the city's Strathcona Hotel (very different than, say, the Edmonton namesake, which had been a perpetual favourite of myself and pals such as Andy Weaver, Paul Pearson, etc circa 2000). I sat with pint, wrote postcards and read further from The Paris Review for a couple of hours, catching my breath. Why didn't I take any pictures? The pub was fine (and there was a woman across from me reading, also, so it felt the right place), although there was an artwork, a drawing, along one wall I found confusing, and didn't know the reference, something about "preparing the troops for Sevastopol," a sketch of the army that I realized, upon looking it up, was a reference to the Crimean War (1854-56). Why would a pub in Victoria, British Columbia be holding a sketch referring to the Crimean War?

I eventually met up with Jennifer, who had my mound of books, and went into the on-stage recording of The Poet Laureate Podcast, in which I interviewed Kyeren about her experience around being Victoria's (seventh!) poet laureate for the first half, with the second half focusing a bit more on me and my work, my thoughts around writing, etcetera. She kept saying throughout that we would have cake in-between, so the audience listening would have to imagine us eating cake. The third poem she read, leading into our break, was one that referenced Marie Antoinette. So, as I said, let us eat cake.

The crowd was grand! Rhona McAdam [my generous host], John Barton again [who later said I reminded him of the late Victoria poet Robin Skelton, which I would like him to explain, as I don't have enough direct knowledge of the man to speculate], and Terese Svoboda [I knew Donald Sutherland, she said, and you have his eyebrows!]. Allegra Kaplan. I was able to return Sara Cassidy her charger cord, which saved my computer while west. During the half-time, a familiar face came up to me (the woman on the couch) and reminded me that she was a waitress at The Royal Oak I frequented in the second half of the 1990s [ex-partner of my late pal Greg Kerr, also] and had been a therapist in Victoria for years, interested in the fact that I was doing an event, and came out, which was very cool. Kyeren had suggested I read three poems, so I read only my three poems from the new Coach House Books anthology On Occasion: Poems for the People, ed. Sina Queyras [see the write-up I did on the collection here]. Given I'd read healthily from my two University of Calgary Press collections, it seemed a good idea to read from the new collection, since it was brand new.

It was an engaging conversation, kind of all over the place, but one I quite enjoyed (worried slightly it was my usual rambling nonsense). I shall let you know when the audio lands online. After, Jen and Allegra [it was good to hang with her and get a sense of her, as I'd only caught her in passing at that first reading] and I caught a quick drink at a hotel (fancy) bar. I mentioned the artwork at the Sticky Wicket, and Allegra suggested it could just as easily be an interest in British-isms by whomever designed the space, and not any deeper or more specific connection between anything here and anything there. That makes the most sense, I think.

And then Jen drove me to the airport for my 11:30pm overnight flight, which left late, bumping my landing in Toronto enough to put me on a further flight back home. But home by noon, exhausted, pleased. Hopefully it won't be another two decades-plus before I land in Victoria again! (and hopefully next time Wayde Compton is actually in town, as well).

Jordan Abel, Dad Era

 

A dad is garbage is gone.

First my father disappeared and then my mother
            abandoned all rational thought.

Did you know that my father taught me
            nothing at all?

To be creative. To be loving. To be generous and kind
            and human were all lessons that I learned
            alone in the snow.

The latest from Edmonton-based poet, editor and prose writer Jordan Abel, a book I hadn’t known was coming, is the book-length lyric suite Dad Era (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2026). Following an array of award-winning titles such as the novel Empty Spaces (Toronto ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2023) [see my essay on such here], the memoir, NISHGA (McClelland and Stewart, 2021) [see my review of such here] and his third poetry title, the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning Injun (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2016) [see my review of such here], Dad Era sits, as one might suggest, a self-contained follow-up to the content of NISHGA, stitched together as a book-length suite of first person declarations directed at, and prompted by the birth of, his young daughter, Phoenix. “I have been alive long enough to know that I / don’t know anything.” he writes, early on in the collection. “You are a person and I love you.” A bit further down, as he offers: “I can’t wait for you to beat me at Mario Kart.”

This is, as the title suggests, the beginning of a new and fresh era in the author’s life. Set as a book-length meditation on and around fatherhood, fathers and being present, Abel composes a lyric around the experience (and joys and anxieties and terrors and intimacies) of and around new fatherhood, following a trajectory of similar explorations by other contemporary poet-fathers, including Calgary poet Richard Harrison’s Big Breath of a Wish (Toronto ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 1998), Dallas, Texas poet Farid Matuk’s This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Chicago IL/Denver CO: Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and My Daughter La Chola (Boise ID: Ahsahta Press, 2013), California poet Dan Thomas-Glass’ Kate & Sonia (Houston TX: little red leaves, textile series, 2011) [see my review of such here] and Toronto poet Dale Martin Smith’s Flying Red Horse (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2021) [see my review of such here]. As well, once any of us become a parent, one immediately begins to assess (or reassess) one’s own parents, seeing those relationships, for good or for ill, with fresh eyes. For Abel, the ongoing loss, through absence, of a father is clearly profound, and underlines across the length and breadth of this collection. As he articulated through NISHGA, his father’s life, as well as the lives of his father’s parents, were impacted directly and profoundly through the Residential School system, introducing a rippling effect of generational trauma that Abel clearly (and obviously) wishes to keep from negatively impacting his own parenting, and his daughter, Phoenix. “I am no expert in racial passing but I do know that / declining invitations to the Calgary / Stampede is one of the most necessary / things I’ve ever had to do.” he writes. “Did you know that all we had to do to arrive here / on the couch in front of our giant flatscreen / was just to survive an attempted genocide?”

Dad Era is charming, and at time, devastating; stitched together with little wisdoms, observations, declarations, admissions, questions and negotiation, offering a poetics of loss, placement, inquiry and illustration. He offers some lovely lyric curls and trails, even across dark passages and paths, attempting to see through that dark into something else, something beyond and truly possible; something directly prompted by this pure gift of parenting, and the opportunity to consciously and purposefully do and be better. “Do you know that family is sometimes just the / people you’re around? Just the people / you choose?” he writes. “I don’t know everything about being sober, but I do / know that if I kept drinking and kept doing / drugs I’d probably be dead by now.” A few pages later:

Did you know that we are both indebted to the
            contours of the North Saskatchewan River? 

May your happiness swell outward from every time
            I said yes to ice cream for breakfast. 

Did you know that being a parent feels a lot like
            being kicked repeatedly in the face while
            doing a puzzle that’s trying to run away
            from you? 

A father is absent is missing.

I used to think that living and dying in Burnaby was
            a real possibility. 

The greatest moment I had with my dad was not a
           real thing.

Composed as an endearing, open-hearted lyric, Dad Era articulates threads of grief, anxiety and loss, wishing to be better than his own father, and better than he himself had been. As the lyric presents, Abel is already aware, being both present and attentive, that he is different, and that he is and can be present, and joyous, and celebratory. This book, in itself, is a gift, both to his daughter and to himself, allowing an open-hearted possibility around, among other things, an eventual forgiveness. As he writes on the final page of the collection:

If I can pass on some wisdom that I learned the hard way
            it is that you are loved and you belong here. 

I do something wonder what would happen if we just let
            you live at Zoo Camp for the rest of your life. 

Did you know that Indigenous joy ‘is an ethics
            of resistance’?

 

Eric Schmaltz, I Confess

 

            In truth, I was surprised to learn that I was a witness to this collection’s inception. As I prepared to write this afterword, Schmaltz reminded me in a Zoom meeting that the foundations for I Confess had been laid at a Poetry and Poetics event, comprised of graduate students and faculty, at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. I vaguely recall that a small group of us had gathered to discuss his then-recently published book Surfaces. If I am to accept Schmaltz’s version of this event, I (allegedly) asked him whose body was represented in that particular book. In all honesty, I remember this discussion somewhat differently; I believe it was either Davy Knittle or Charles Bernstein (and I’m mostly sure it was the latter) actually posed this question. But in the context of my confession and Schmaltz’s I Confess, does the veracity of this moment really matter? The failure of our collective memory of this event underscores the fragile constructions of the truth and its expression in the book. What matters is that truth is really a partial thing, but the robustness of the lyrical poem can hold these ambiguities with grace, even if the documented record skips it. Such grace is inherent in the pleasure of poetic form and in the indeterminateness of memory that underlies Schmaltz’s verse in I Confess. Michael Donaghy may call the poem a ‘diagram of consciousness,’ but Schmaltz’s poems are forensic study into truth’s mystification. (Orchid Tierney, “Afterword”)

From Halifax-based poet, critic and editor Eric Schmaltz comes I Confess (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2025), a book-length poetic expanse that follows an array of chapbooks, as well as his full-length debut, SURFACES (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2018) [see my review of such here], and critical titles including I Want to Tell You Love, A Critical Edition by bill bissett and Milton Acorn (co-edited with Christopher Doody; Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2021) [see my review of such here]. Produced with an “Afterword” by American-based New Zealand poet, editor, academic and critic Orchid Tierney, there’s an enormous amount of play through Schmaltz’s I Confess; play, resistance, confession, self-awareness, visual expansiveness and lyric truth. It is as though he, as a poet who leans far more into experimental and conceptual forms, attempted to approach lyric’s “confessional mode” from an entirely different perspective, pulling apart the bones to thus reassemble into something else. “Remember, you can be as nervous as you like.” he writes, in his own call-and-response, “Nervousness and deception look different. // Do not move. Tell me when you would like to begin.”

There are those who might see the confessional lyric as an exhausted form, although through Schmaltz, a whole new life is introduced. Through text, photographs, visual text, waveforms, erasure, utterance, polygraph charts and accumulation, Schmaltz explores the tensions of truth and the body across the experimental lyric; exploring certainty and uncertainty, as he investigates text-forms and perceived truth, attention, poetry and poetic form. A caveat, whether descriptor or warning, by the author at the offset, offers: “This book is a document of truth’s performance under duress. // Some of what you will read is true; the rest is poetry.”

In many ways, the core of the book’s content is familiar—who am I and how did I get here—but examined through a unique blend of experimental and confessional, each side wrestling for a kind of control that might not be possible. Given the foundation for this particular mode of inquiry is the use of polygraph, it introduces a whole other layer of tension, of resistance: “I confess,” as the poem, the pages, repeat. “We’re going to focus on some background questions.” Schmaltz writes, “This part of the session ensures that you are able to speak truthfully and that you are mentally and physically fit to proceed with the polygraph test today. // Please answer the following questions truthfully.” There are occasionally ways through which certain conceptual poetry-based works can articulate human elements more deeply, more openly, than the lyric mode, something I felt as well through Christian Bök’s The Xenotext Book 1 (Coach House Books, 2015) [see my review of such here], and Schmaltz manages a dual-core through this work that counterpoints brilliantly, working from the most basic of human questions across a structure of the nature of being, the nature of expansive, articulated, inarticulate and impossible truth, composed across an expansive bandwidth.

after the fullness of night / I arrived at the border / he eyed the length
of my surname / a distance I could never travel 

there / he saw the lines of kin / ‘how do you pronounce your last name?’
he asked / ‘did your family change it?’ / this is where I found myself 

lost / my tongue lolled at its limit / unsettling the certainty of living it /
a line crossing a line / struck / I forced it through my teeth & stuttered
the revelatory cut 

I was sighed into a palimpsest / photographs with no names / a map
with lines faint / my family’s uncertain phrase 

we were not taught to look too deeply at the tangle of root / just the
finger pointing to the tree / I open its file & see the error line 

I could retrace my westward steps / to run my finger in the once
nomadic / only to settle again along these same waterways / taught
to shrug longingly whenever asked