In Paper Trail, Paré Writes Her Way into Work

In Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, published by NeWest Press, she examines the everyday ritual of people dreaming themselves into and out of working.  Nearing the end of her long career, a sentence, in the public service, Paré dissects the surreal and all-too-real aspects of life in the office.

 

The book is a series of fleeting or consuming observations, memories, thoughts and mental schedules that flow into each other like the days of the week.  Paré leads us through her inner files, a briefcase filled with poetry, poetic prose, memoir and fiction.  She records the misconceptions about work, both inside and outside of the office, in relation to who we are.  There are sections of her book that focus on the social graces of work life and the unwritten code of fitting in, and using appropriate, airy topics for conversations with colleagues.

 

There are dense pages and white spaces, like work and the life in-between work.  Paré looks at work as a commodity for life and how we calculate our happiness.  She gives us the plight of a career woman, shifting gears between different roles that include mother, wife, daughter, and civil servant.  Interestingly, she brings in another examination of how the roles of women and their existence differ in comparison with her mother’s generation.

 

She pairs the surreal, seemingly arbitrary working world with the concrete, practicality of life, and the surreal experiences of life with the encroaching reality of work; measuring security and what her work allows her to have in life.  She uses a Cinderella complex to draw a parallel in the idea of work, security, and perceptions being impermanent.

 

In the midst of all this, she has short, unexpected conversations or daydreams with her own personal Kafka, which is developed throughout the book, trying to find answers, a balance or an anchor, and preparing for this transformation of leaving work. 

 

The notion of working as part of our freewill, and subjecting ourselves to the weight, fear, demand and criticism of our work is a crucial part.  She writes about trying to write herself out of her office where she feels boxed in, drawing on the story of a man who spends twenty years in a jail cell and was afraid to leave it when the door was finally opened.  He wouldn’t leave.  There is an invisible chain that links the civil servant to his or her desk, and the security of a full pension dangling in front of them like a gold carrot.

 

From there, she launches into the lists of survival kit items for everyday, to survive the office wilderness.  Her briefcase is both a burden and a necessity.  Paré also identifies herself and her work through the personal sacrifices, self-preservation and resourcefulness of her Parénts’ working lives.  In the same vein, Paré likens work to religion and takes another look at these beliefs and values.

 

In Paper Trail, Paré writes another story between the musings of her work poems, writing herself into a real fiction.

Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China

We often hear about Canada's university graduates embarking on overseas adventures to teach English in China, Taiwan and Japan, but rarely do we hear about their stories and experiences.  JoAnn Dionne's memoir is written from the in-depth journals she kept while she taught English to elementary students in the People's Republic of China.  She takes a close look at the boundaries that are acknowledged and dissolved both in the classroom and beyond the school gates.  These boundaries include the China's residents' fascination with Western culture, and the Chinese government's attempt to maintain a communist atmosphere.  The change that occurs in China's politics and collective thinking, succumbing to Western influences, is interesting in its growing contradictions.

 

Dionne's memoir is humorous and startling, from the daily activities and life-altering adventures she encounters in a communist country.  She profiles the varying personalities, insights and antics of her young students, as well as the adult local residents.  These encounters give her a richer understanding of how the Chinese people interact with and interpret their own environment, and how they secretly feel about their government. The book is a reflection of her observations, conversations and emotions, while in a foreign place, as she struggles with her own foreign concepts.

Dionne organized her book launch on March 1, 2008, in a new art gallery called Dales in Chinatown, Victoria, BC.  She is currently traveling across Canada, promoting her book in the independent bookstores.  Little Emperors is a glimpse into the future of China, in the way that these young minds are being introduced to Western thinking, in a time when the Pan-Pacific movement continues to grow and strengthen.  The book is also a message to Westerners about the censorship of the Chinese government, and the atrocities against basic human rights that still occur in that part of the world.

Publisher:  Dundurn

Cost:  $24.99

Thorburn Ages in Memory, Body, Poetry and Jazz

If only we could step back through a mirror to have a closer look at our younger selves, while cross-examining and contemplating our present, aging bodies; to have conversations with those who are gone, and understand the inevitability of moving forward.

 

In Russell Thorburn’s book, Father Tell Me I Have Not Aged, the poems are like slide photos or quick glimpses of the past and other places.  The reader is taken into a different age, whether it is younger, older or in another geographical setting.  Thorburn’s poems explore fear and love, and an underlying danger exists.

 

There is a struggle between clinging to impermanent snapshots and mental pictures, and the paradox of the poet’s desire to release these memories.  The reels of memory continue to reveal what is alive, even in the hint of death, and bring back those who are dead, acknowledge their death and, in turn, bring back life.

 

The poems are an entranceway into dreams and memory; there is a longing or regret, and a slant of betrayal in the depth of honesty when resurrecting old lovers and weaving them into the poet’s present, waking consciousness, as seen in “First Love”.  The reader is left hanging in-between patches of memory, but the images are clear and alive. 

 

Seasons and nature are prominent.  For instance, in the poem “February” Thorburn uses the seasonal landscape to create a delicate and suggestive setting.  In the poem, “For Those of Us Who Have Lost Our Jobs” the poet employs snow, and the cold weather to lend a harsher element with the cold biting the spirit.  Nature often sets the stage for emotion to say what can’t be expressed otherwise.

 

The second section begins with the title poem, “Father, Tell Me I Have Not Aged”, which allows the poet to step back into the shadows of his childhood.  There is also a strong focus on his mother and a yearning to enter her secret, silent world.  The poet mirrors himself in his parents, and re-visits his own world and perceptions at various stages of growth.

 

In the third section, more eros appears and the poet manages to escape into a cinematic world, reflecting real life.  The referencing of characters or real actors creates a limitation in these poems.  Thorburn is asking the reader to work harder and develop a deeper interest and understanding of specific movies and plot lines.  He invites a certain generation of readers.  Still, the play by play scenes are melded with the poet’s imagination and interpretation of human themes – love, sex, fear and death.

 

The last section of the book turns to sophisticated literary references ie. Kafka, Sonnets to Orpheus, and Rilke in “Waiting for the Bus”.  The imagery becomes surreal, opening up and slowly leading the reader out of the book, having come through the labyrinth.  There is a stronger use of image repetition, such as ‘star-bulbed sky’, as the literary actors exit the stage.  Thorburn also experiments with different line structures, such as fragmented couplets, and there is a gradual breaking down of thought and movement.  The lines are sparse, creating more space to move, such as in the poems “Last Night on Michigan Street” and “Zeno Remembers”.  Throughout the book, the rhythms of his poems ride different movements with a steady heartbeat.  There is an unleashing and reigning in, like a jazz tempo. 

 

Thorburn’s poems are about ending, or facing an end; another kind of passage for growing up and growing old, and being thrust into another unknown or kind of death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Broken Mirror, Fallen Leaf

 

As Yvonne Blomer explains, the title for her first book of poetry published by Ekstasis Editions, a broken mirror, fallen leaf, depicts the idea that we cannot go back from a journey without transformation.

 

Crossing borders is more than boarding a plane and crossing geographical borders.  It is embracing another world – the people, language, culture – and accepting yourself as always being a fraction separate from that world.  Her book explores the barrier between cultural images that both divides and bridges the experience of being a Caucasian woman living in Japan.  She has the advantage of being an outsider to eavesdrop on situations that are both foreign and startlingly human. 

 

The book itself is divided into four sections, or seasons, of her journey: Four Seasons, Gaijin da (foreign person), Small Japan, and The Path Leading Home.  In Four Seasons, Blomer looks at these quiet barriers and an intimacy that occurs with the natural world, as seen in her poem “Crabs”.  The armchair reader is given a glimpse of sensual and historical Japan in “Onsen 1”, and is treated to a ‘fly on the wall’ account of tender relationship rituals holding everyday gestures of beauty and surprise.

 

In many of her poems, the language is sparse and full, all at once, such as in “Ofuco”.  There are near haikus, and small moments not to be forgotten that hold the universe, as in the poem “Ways of Seeing a Firefly”.  The variation of poem structures serves to capture each scene in its own organic rhythm.

 

Blomer also reveals a confessional side to her poetry, as in her connection with her own husband while adjusting to a new world and becoming more familiar with this landscape.  Still, the reader is aware of a sharpness in the contrast that is felt as an outsider invited, but not entirely belonging, as shown in the poem “Four Seasons in Japan”.

 

The second part of the book, Gaijin da, is a series of poems that are a kind of awakening.  These poems are jolting, yet subtle, and lend a braver, closer look at the surroundings and mysteries of Japan, such as in “Through the Temple with Buddha.”  Blomer delves into a more observational scope with these poems, and the sketches of the local people and activities.  She engages and comments largely on her own strangeness and peculiar presence to the Japanese, as seen in “The Bats Came in Place of the Swallows”.  Her four-part Ghazals piece together these abstract lines, trying to make sense of disjointed ideas, sights and movements.

 

Blomer has included a glossary in her book to help the reader navigate through this other world.  This added touch is a necessity, but also a gesture of invitation by the author to join her, and to stumble over these foreign sounds and make sense of them.

 

A broken mirror, fallen leaf is a journey in which a new life is adopted and, as with any new experience, we are never quite the same.  

 

 

Turning Left to the Ladies - a book review

Kate Braid's most recent book of poetry, Turning Left to the Ladies, published by Palimpset Press, is a personal account of being a woman working in the male-dominated construction trade.  The poet has weathered the daily battery of sexism and prejudice from her co-workers, and built protective walls to hold her position.  She endured the initiation of entering her profession, and her thorough knowledge of the work, tools and terminology earned her the credentials to write about being on the job, in her own right. 

 

The poems move through the speaker's self-doubt, vulnerability, determination and, finally, acceptance.  The poem, "How She Knows", demonstrates the speaker's dogged strength in a weaker position as she creates a wall between herself and her co-workers in the face of inevitable defeat.  In the poem, "Spy", Braid attempts to blend in, to shed the female body and name and become a fellow worker; to learn more than the trade.  The serious subject matter of the book also resonates through touches of humour and cheek, in the speaker's defiant attempts to transform from woman to construction worker, and to embrace her inner female again.  This is evident in the poem, "The Female Form" in the line:  Carpenteress--yes. I work hard at it, this look/ of the great outdoors, doing the work of men.

Strangely, the details of construction work in the poems mirror the construction of poetry in its rhythm of procedure, form, logic and demand for precision.  The rhythm and cadence echo a swinging arm.  Braid taps into alliteration and personification, and explores an intimacy with building tools and the art of construction.  Who knew there was a wealth of poems in the construction industry? 

Braid has a sincere love and respect for the work, despite the need to disguise her gender.  She re-emerges in her true skin at the end of her shift, as described in the poems "Day's End" and "Post-modern Breasts in the Bath".  Slowly, steadily, she abandons her disguise and the poems move into a celebration of woman, amidst the paradox desire to disappear as woman.  The poems ease into a place of acceptance and a stronger comfort with handling the tools, the men and herself.  The hidden female voice emerges, still wary but with presence.

Kate Braid will be reading from this collection on Friday, February 5, at The Black Stilt Cafe at 7:30pm.  $3.00 admission.

Book Review of Huge Blue by Patrick Pilarski

Patrick Pilarski's small poems, or meditations, in his first collection Huge Blue leave monumental footfalls in recording the various terrains of western Canada.  In the tradition of Japanese poetry--haiku, haibun, tanka and senryu--the crisp and condensed images embody a larger experience and draw the reader into a heightened intimate moment.  Pilarski uses these forms to capture his relationship with the natural world.  The poems are placed like small stepping stones across the varying landscapes, and mark the resting points where the poet reflects on the journey's highlights with his travel companion.  In Pilarski's use of the tanka prose and haibun form, there is a sprinkling of humour or surprise in the normalcy of everyday actions or reactions to the unfolding of the speaker's surroundings.  For instance, in the poem "Last Load", the speaker comments on the adjustments to a new environment after a long journey and how his partner suddenly remembers 'the box of handmade pottery above the stove'.  There is a sense of restlessness in an otherwise state of exhaustion; something random and contrast.

The poems also reflect on the seasons, and how the weather and natural landscapes are parallel to how the poet moves through his emotions in these changing landscapes.  Nature is also personified, as witnessed in the lines:  two mountains/ cross-legged in the valley/ watching the storm/ one pulls the screen, changes/ into its best white gown.  Pilarski focuses on the seemingly small, yet miraculous happenings in the natural world.  The use of the Japanese poetic form is appropriate to record these snapshots of time and place, and to share these personal experiences on a global plane.

Pilarski will be reading from this collection at the Black Stilt Cafe's Planet Earth Poetry series on February 12th at 7:30pm.  $3.00 cover.  Huge Blue is published by leaf press.  For more information, visit www.leafpress.ca.

 

Poet Explores Colours Coming Out of the Blue in New Work

On December 1^st, Betsy Warland, a Vancouver-based writer and the director of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, will read from her most recent work, a book of poetry titled “Only This Blue” at the  Martin Batchelor Gallery 5:30 pm to 7 pm.

 

“Only This Blue” is a long poem that explores coping with a life-threatening experience through the guidance of colour. Warland experiments with usage of words and poetic structure, such as line breaks and white space to create depth and meaning. The narrator of the long poem struggles with the effects of an illness, and learns a new and uneven landscape through the use of words and colour. There are four dominant colours in the poem: green, red, yellow and, finally, blue. Warland uses colour to identify a language for her experience.

 

The concept of the long poem was not something Warland had initially designed. The colours came as she was going through treatment. She had been writing non-fiction for four years and facing a life-threatening experience brought her back to poetry, as she said she had a need to write “closer to home”. The book was originally meant to be written in four suites of colours, and then gradually became one long, united poem. Her inspiration of colour stems from the colours of nature. Blue is the colour of the sky, and “the sky is unknowable and yet it holds great comfort and wisdom”. Colour “became a major guide for me.”

 

“I don’t have a negative association with any colour, as they represent the natural world for me. When going through a life-threatening experience, it is important to find a companion or relationship. As a child, a great companion to me was nature. When we are going through a crisis it can provoke fear in other people but nature is never afraid of you,” said Warland. “Now I live in an urban environment, but I value the natural world still thriving amidst the concrete.

 

There is a significant absence of blue throughout the poem, until the end of the book, when blue appears as a symbol of knowledge and calm; a realization and acceptance of the illness and knowing there is nothing we are able to control.

 

“There is a tendency when facing a big unknown to seek structure and answers. Once you go through something like that, you realize that you don’t know what will happen. This is our human condition – our awareness of uncertainty– and learning to embrace that is freeing; is a relief! For me, blue bridges everything, as it holds all colours.”

 

Warland has published nine books, which includes – What holds us Here (1998) and serpent (w)rite (1987) – a memoir, Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss (2000), and essays, Proper Deafinitions (1990).