Best Canadian Poetry 2024,
edited by Bardia Sinaee,
Biblioasis
168 pages, $23.95
I look forward every year to Best Canadian Poetry 2024 because someone else has done the hard work of reading numerous journals and magazines to select a wide range of Canadian poetry. I am never disappointed, and the 2024 volume keeps up the high standards set by previous editors. This year’s editor, Bardia Sinaee, eloquently addresses a significant issue in her introduction: AI and ChatGPT. As she says, “Although it involves technique, poetry is not a technical problem. We write it because we want to, not because we lack technology that can do it for us.” But she recognizes that AI will have an effect, and therefore, “the pieces collected in this anthology constitute a historical snapshot of an idea of poetry, a collective articulation of what poems are for circa 2023.”
As is the practice, the fifty poems in this volume are followed by statements from the poets, a list of magazines consulted along with their addresses, and acknowledgement of the place of previous publication. While I often think I’d rather have more poems, the information provided can be quite useful for anyone looking to expand their poetry horizons. And because the poems are often about a Canadian experience, the horizon seen may be a familiar one. For example, Nicholas Bradley’s “Atmospheric River” is a letter to a friend in Alberta about the deluge that destroyed parts of major BC highways, flooded homes, and stopped travel: “I look at these sweet nothings / through my own zeroes, leer at drone footage / of the crumbled Coquihalla Highway / and the streaming porn of liquefied cities.” Another familiar experience for a resident of Vancouver Island is found in Anna Moore’s “PKOLS Equinox,” which describes three girls on a beach while the air is tainted with smoke: “Today there’s no relief from the smog, / unless you’re underwater or buried / in someone’s arms.” But the little girls are having a wonderful time exploring the beach: “To them a swathe of sea lettuce / is as beautiful as an evening gown. / What is time if not a void to fill / with anemones, rock fish, purple chitons?” The concrete details are exquisite and pay homage to the beauty of the seashore.
Another poem that captivated me is Kayla Czaga’s “Thirteen Years,” in which the speaker compares her writing with that of a friend, while referencing Virginia Woolf and the suicide of a girl the friend knew. The speaker says,
That fall, you wrote a poem about the tide bearing her body
away like a bottle with a note curled up inside it.
Our writing group loved that poem. I did, too,even if I didn’t believe it. I wrote tiny poems,
stripped to nouns and verbs, a kind of writing
someone might admire but not love.
How poems are conceived and how they are received both by the writer and reader/listener can vary. In this case the friend says about her poem that “every line was bad.” And that the speaker also didn’t believe.
Carolyn Smart’s “Ashes” delves into grief. The speaker is given the ashes of a loved one “in what might have been/ a shopping bag, with handles. Inside it was a cardboard box / and inside that, ashes in a see-through plastic bag.” The mundane containers contrast the precious life the ashes represent. The ashes are spread in a field the man loved, “the bone chips lying on the soil like flakes of snow.” The bone chips eventually disappear after a storm, and the speaker says, “But unlike him, I know that they’re still there.” The quietness of the sense of loss is profound.
I can’t pick out a favourite poem as so many of these have grabbed me, but I must draw attention to Matthew King’s “On the Ducks Who Are People and the Ducks Who Are Ducks.” Written in six sexains, the poem is a clever and sensitive (often difficult to blend the two) look at humans as if they are ducks. King factors in Daffy Duck, who is a person. The other ducks in the movie are just ducks, but most important is the recognition of the self: “The duck who talks and is a person is the one duck / who matters. That duck is you. You identify with that duck, not the others, because you are a person . . .” Of course, as the poem points out everyone else also identifies with Daffy. The poem goes on to show the differences between ducks and humans, but that we also share experiences: “But we must not miss what they’re not missing, in ourselves / or in them. They open onto the world like we do. / They are moved by the sun like we are, they feel it and / they awaken themselves . . . ”
It’s impossible to draw an overarching theme or form as in a collection of fifty poems by fifty different poets, trying to do so would be silly. But these poems have all been chosen by one person, and if any feeling unites them, it’s a kind of gentleness even when the subject is uncomfortable. And that makes this book enticing emotionally on many levels.
Best Canadian Stories 2024,
edited by Lisa Moore
Biblioasis
232 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-566-8
In a departure from previous Best Canadian Stories collections, editor Lisa Moore has chosen nine unpublished stories to include. The reason, she says, was to include voices that “rural” and/or “new,” plus stories that are “not realism” or that “unfolded in the future.” It’s a little difficult to believe that those voices and stories could not be found in the many magazines she read for the collection, but editors get to choose their material, it appears. Having previously published stories form the bulk of Best Canadian Stories may be a way for readers to find a new magazine or journal to discover.
In any case, the sixteen stories cover a range of subjects and styles. The overall effect is that these stories were chosen to demonstrate what stories can do, in a way a separate endeavor from telling stories. The second selection, “Interloper” by Sharon Bala, certainly falls into this category as it investigates the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa, and Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell. The connection between the sister is shown to be stronger than that between Vanessa and Clive, and once the Bells have their son, the relationships among the various family members shift again. Both Virginia and Clive feel sidelined by Vanessa who is coping with her baby. The privilege these characters live with is extreme, and so is their emotional turmoil. They make fun of the lower classes: “Lord how the working classes enjoy their melodramas Virginia said” as this privileged class does the same thing. Virginia’s life is complicated by her “sapphic tendencies,” as well as her perception that “Mr Joyce has smashed it all up. . . . What a novel should be, the form it must take. He has thrown tradition from the window. I should like to achieve something similar.” This story works as an academic demonstration and it’s helpful to know about the Bloomsbury set.
At another extreme is Lue Palmer’s “Wata Tika Dan Blood,” which uses non-standard English and takes some effort to follow. This story is much shorter than Bala’s, which fits their respective styles. The use of language in Palmer’s story develops its own poetry: “At the soul river, down in the water, where spirit float in pools of wet cloth; weaving bloated and swaying. Souls floating like jellyfish around each other. They colour red. They colour blue, black, brown, green, purple. They fold in on themselves, floating up like they ready for the judgement day.” The pace of reading is slowed as a different world is explained in matching different language. It’s odd, and it works. Being forced out of conventional language use invites a new way of thinking for readers used to a particular vernacular.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is one of my favourite writers, and he never disappoints. His story titled “One Woman’s Memories” features Louise, whose husband has died and whose adult son Paul lives far away from the reserve in Edmonton. Belcourt touches on the problems created by Indian Act; Louise’s common-law husband doesn’t have status because his mother married a Métis man. The narrator remarks, “Minor manipulations of colonial law shaped everyday life.” Louise is proud of Paul and his university education. “When he convocated, Louise sobbed in her seat in the large auditorium. It marked for her a subtle break from history. He would live a better life.” This story is a tender look at how Louise is living through the changes in her life, and part of that is to talk to her son about her past, her experiences in residential school and her love for another Cree girl. Paul feels guilty for living his life in the city and has no desire to return to the reserve. Louise doesn’t want to leave: “Louise’s sense of self is tied to where she is.” Belcourt often writes about how we live in our bodies and how they can be connected to place. Louise is such a character.
Another well-known writer included is Ian Williams, whose story “Bro,” is an unsettling account of a man who decides he needs a Black friend: “Greg was on a mission to make a Black friend but there weren’t many, any Black people where he lived.” As an opening line, it makes hearts sink. Greg’s wife rightly criticizes him, saying “that he should not approach finding a Black friend as an item on a checklist.” But Greg insists. The fact that Greg has to call his new friend (not really a friend at all) Bro because he doesn’t know the man’s name says it all. And it’s not that Greg is a bad guy. He’s clueless.
Sara Power’s “The Circular Motion of a Professional Spit-Shiner” takes readers to RMC and the friendship of cadets Joyce and Roy. Female students have a rough time. Some of the male students are awful, and they get away with it. Joyce develops an eating disorder. Roy gets interested in mime and encourages Joyce. Their performances at mime open-mic contrast their inability to communicate at RMC. Joyce thinks she can’t report the abuse, but when she performs she “has faith that her audience can see what is invisible.” This splendid story illustrates both harm and friendship and how people handle challenges, in some positive ways and in some negative ones.
Apocalypse is easy to imagine given the various disasters, and Sourayan Mookerjea’s “Long Haul” is scarily believable. Set in the near future, the story features Jeff and Kim, firefighters in crews who are tasked with extinguishing fires in a reactor and then restarting pumps to cool things down. The destruction is reminiscent of the Fort McMurray fires, and the story’s townsite is Fort Jasper. But the devastation of the fire is nothing compared to the environmental ruin: “The great lunar pox scars of the tar sands and their vast reservoirs and flood plains of toxic tailing slurry had been finally scabbed over and buried by the very funerary medicine that had long been clawed out and stripped from the living forest soil.” It’s hard to imagine anyone surviving.
It’s a pleasure to have so many excellent and thoughtful stories in one volume. The subjects and styles vary, and anyone interested in the short story will find Best Canadian Stories 2024 full of engaging works.
Prairie Edge,
by Conor Kerr
Penguin Random House
262 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-7710-0357-8
When you have a character making a living by stealing catalytic converters, perhaps it’s not such a leap to bison rustling and setting the bison free in the Edmonton river valley. Ezzy has been raised in, or more accurately has mostly survived, a faltering social services system, and he sees little in his future. His cousin Grey, once a committed activist, has become cynical and scornful of activism which appears meaningful but which isn’t.
So what can these Metis characters do to force change or at least show what change may look like? The answer Grey come up wit is to return bison to the river valley. It’s crazy, but it’s an idea that will generate huge interest. Fortunately, a herd of bison live close by in Elk Island Park. Whether the bison-napping will generate change beyond the lives of Ezzy and Grey is a huge issue. Conor Kerr cleverly deploys humour in the service of a serious problem. How is reconciliation to be effected? If the dominant and destructive settler culture is to be modified, attention must be paid to the natural world.
But Ezzy and Grey have a lot against them. Ezzy has done time in group homes and jail (and maybe there’s little difference), and even when he goes to the friendhsip centre with his Auntie May, he feels uncomfortable: “Ezzy narrates, “She loved the community that hung out there, but I always felt judged when I went with her. Like they knew something about me that I didn’t. Most people had done jail at some point—just part of our existence—so it couldn’t be that. . . It felt like there was no way to do good in there.” Ezzy’s discouragement with life is mitigated somewhat by his relationship with Grey for whom he would do almost anything. Grey has to contend with a former boyfriend, Tyler, who has built his brand on activism while being entirely self-serving. Grey’s contempt for so-called white “allies” is palpable, and she places Tyler in that selfish group. An ally selling t-shirts and stickers to raise money for the Bison Strong movement is donating a whopping 10% to the activists. It’s about as heartfelt an action as all the land acknowledgements spoken before every gathering. And Grey wonders why Tyler isn’t in on the scheme.
The novel is constructed with both Ezzy’s and Grey’s points of view. Ezzy comes across as the much more believable character, and he is definitely more sympathetic than Grey, who is something of a cliched character—a smart woman with possibilities and opportunities who squanders time on the wrong man because of sexual attraction. Her upbringing has been far less traumatic than Ezzy’s, and the novel makes it clear than what Ezzy really needs and wants is a family to belong to. He tends to self-medicate with alcohol, a common choice for damaged people, although he tells his aunt, “No hard stuff.” She accurately points out, “Beer isn’t sober.” She speaks from her own experience and is sober.
Overall, the novel viewpoints, especially Ezzy’s, that show the immense damage that has been done, both to people and to the environment, which are, of course, inextricably linked. Halting the damage is crucial, but answers are few. Grey thinks it’s hopeless: “I was so fucking stupid. We can’t change the world. We’re living in the apocalypse, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Ezzy asks her, “‘You talk to any Elders?’” and then says, “‘You don’t need to fix everything.’” Ezzy has a kind of innate wisdom that is appealing in its simplicity.
Prairie Edge is an absorbing novel about contemporary issues that had their roots long in the past. The resolutions are going to take time, and things will not look like they used to, but then cultures and lives are in constant flux. What’s critical is that change must happen and on a large scale for the survival of cultures and individuals within those cultures.
A Way to Be Happy: Stories,
by Caroline Adderson,
Biblioasis,
230 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-77196-622-1
Caroline Adderson’s latest collection of short stories, A Way to Be Happy, could function as a masterclass in writing. The eight stories perceptively explore the human condition, and suggests the way to be happy is not to be alone. But that is not a given as life itself is complex and often contrary.
The first and last stories are deliriously good at showing how lack of contact or care and too much can be equally destructive. In “All Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone,” Cory and Angel party-crash on New Year’s Eve. Their goal is to steal enough to fund their own detox. Even before they leave the party in a Vancouver high rise, Angel starts to feel the effects of withdrawal and despairs about the plan. As the narrator says, “A blunt, bitter stab against the back of her throat—just a hint of what was coming. All this was pointless. No way could she do it. Maybe Cory could. He hadn’t been around that long. Also, something was waiting for him on the other side, in that other life where she wasn’t welcome.” Adderson weaves in their background, especially Angel’s, who has been living on the streets after being bounced around in foster care. Angel’s best friend dies of an overdose. Cory can stay with his mother, but Angel Is not allowed. This story is all about loss, and it’s sadly familiar. Drugs provide some relief from a grim life, but are no answer. And even when people want to get clean, the care is unavailable.
In stark contrast is the final story, “From the Archives of the Hospital for the Insane.” Set in 1909, the story combines narrative with documents and letters to display how the patients in the hospital get lots of care, but it’s mostly the wrong kind and for the wrong reasons. Adderson focusses on female patients, who are institutionalized and constantly monitored, often against their will. Women are force-fed, sterilized, and subjected to what amounts to imprisonment for a variety of ailments, from mental health issues to poverty, lack of family, convulsions, and other reasons. The patients are often drugged and meant to follow a rigid schedule, which may cause further harm. Some of the caregivers do give care; others are mean. This last story demonstrates that forms of extreme care can be as damaging as no care, and it’s clear that as a society (world?) we must find something that works better to treat the vulnerable. It’s also evident that damage is caused in many ways in society and that healthy individuals can be made unhealthy by sick cultures. These two stories on their own make the book worth reading.
The oddest story, “Yolki-Palki” (“fir trees and sticks” in Russian, meaning “holy cow”), stems from a story Adderson found on line. As she explains in her Acknowledgements, “Shocked Russian surgeons open man who thought he had a tumour . . . to find a FIR Tree inside his lung.” The main character, Varlam, is a contract killer who experiences pain in his lungs, presumably a metaphor for guilt. He thinks about his mother and a toy rabbit while being ministered to by a stranger named Darlene. It’s a curious story that works by leaving an impression rather than a coherent series of events.
Fear of a standard medical examination drives Ketman in “The Procedure,” and he suffers because his wife is apparently obsessed with their son and pays little to no attention to her husband. At the heart of Ketman’s fear is loneliness, and Adderson uses the procedure to show how a man’s anxiety may not be logical to others but do make sense, given his experiences. The imagery in this story succeeds in building Ketman’s dread about the colonoscopy as it also positions the story in Vancouver: “Ketman was nearing the Massey Tunnel by then . . . . No bottleneck on a holiday. Ketman breezed right through, remarking–also as usual—its untagged state, where every other stretch of bare concrete in the Lower Mainland bore the spray can’s jagged testaments.” The consistency of the imagery sneaks up and governs the story masterfully.
Story-telling lies at the heart of “Obscure Objects.” Charlotte is told a story by her friend and fellow ESL teacher Renata, and the task is to figure out what she can use and how. The job at the private ESL college is bad, bad for the students and the teachers. Humour serves to make the situation even worse: “The photocopy machine churned away n the corner, a beige Satanic mill. . . . We could tell [the repairman] thought it was a shitty place to work and were furthered divided by our shame, just as management wanted it. They were terrified we would unionize.” Charlotte tells the story of the job, her encounter with another colleague named Sterling, and Renata’s story of infidelity. “Obscure Objects” is a clever consideration of story-making.
Caroline Adderson’s short fiction is terrific, and “A Way to Be Happy” is an excellent introduction to her work. Anyone who reads these stories is likely to search out her other books—and they will be rewarded. And thus happy.
