I was working on a display for our Adult Reading Challenge the other day, and I came across a poetry collection called Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood. The cover immediately caught my attention. You can probably see why. The smear of paint covering a woman’s face immediately draws you in, calling to mind notions of erasure and dehumanization perhaps. As something of a true crime aficionado, I was also intrigued by Gatwood’s exploration of the controversial topic. The true crime genre is ripe for discussion, moral or otherwise. The author’s note details a period of her life when she experienced insomnia because of a specific fear that she would become a victim herself, the subject of a true crime story. She interrogates the intentions or agenda of the genre, questioning why certain stories are told instead of others. The complex relationship a lot of women have with true crime, as avid viewers and readers, is briefly yet powerfully illuminated. The poems in the collection continue that theme. Concise stanzas of powerful imagery and analogy, revealing formative experiences in her childhood that have had an impact on who Gatwood is today. I wanted to write about poetry for this blog entry because I believe it’s an efficient way to absorb a lot of meaning from a small amount of text. So, if you find yourself a busy library worker like myself, you can pick up and put down a poetry collection whenever you have a free moment. Finishing a poem feels like a small amount of closure each time, and closure is nothing to scoff at. Here are some of the other exciting collections I’ve come across in our catalogue. To be honest, I am in the process of reading several of them. I have assembled a salad — if you will — of different poetic ingredients, and I am grazing to my heart’s content. Here’s hoping there’s one that strikes your fancy. Like a juicy heirloom tomato in the summer.

Morgan Harper Nichols

I first came to know Morgan Harper Nichols’ poetry through Instagram. The gorgeous colourful backgrounds with textured designs caught my eye on a friend’s story. Not a case of style over substance, the poems are comforting in their quiet truths. Writing poetry like this is incredibly hard to do. In the foreword of You Are Only Just Beginning, Nichols says the structure of the collection follows the classic “heroine’s journey” (after Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey/monomyth). This is a framework you hear a lot about in literature courses and screenwriting classes because you can apply it to narrative and scriptwriting. It starts with the Call to Adventure and moves through several stages of the journey or quest until the heroine is home again. In You Are Only Just Beginning, each phase of the journey is inspired by an organic being, an object, or an “ecosystem” — beginning with the sun. Sometimes, it feels like I’m reading affirmations. I think affirmations are somewhat contentious, depending on who you ask, but I can’t deny that reading the repetitions in her poetry is often a therapeutic experience. It might just make you feel better if you experience anxiety or other types of mental illness. Take everything with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of skepticism, of course.

Raymond Antrobus

I was struck by British poet Raymond Antrobus‘ collection The Perseverance when I read it a couple years ago. The beauty and power of those poems are undeniable. There are political underpinnings to his words, urgency and relevance strengthened by the elegant medium through which they are conveyed. As a deaf person, he discusses the marginalization and oppression of such people in society. I learned a lot about the history of deaf people’s mistreatment. The notes at the end of the collection were particularly helpful for this. For example, I learned that Alexander Graham Bell — inventor of the telephone — spent years advocating for “oralism,” which is the belief that all people who are deaf can speak if they are discouraged from sign language. Any evidence he had for this theory was later criticized as unsound or even deceitful. The most powerful of Antrobus’ poems, perhaps, is called “Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris.” It tells the true story of a speech-impaired and deaf 29-year-old who was killed by a state trooper in North Carolina after the latter attempted to pull him over for speeding.

You should be able to access The Perseverance on Libby by signing in with your library card number and PIN and searching Markham Public Library’s collection. (Ask at the service desk if you’re not sure how to do this.) We do have two of his books for children in our collection, however. Can Bears Ski? is a picture book about a young bear experiencing deafness. Once Little Bear gets hearing aids, he realizes what he’d been hearing as “Can bears ski?” was actually “Can you hear me?” We also have another children’s book of his called Terrible Horses. About a brother and sister who constantly fight — this one is about the power of art, not only in providing a respite from intense emotions but also communicating what’s going on inside a sibling’s internal world.

Above Ground

A common theme for several of these collections is pulling inspiration from nature. One of the first poems in Clint Smith’s Above Ground uses the classic philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” It becomes a metaphor for that period when expectant parents are waiting to hear good news about a pregnancy in its early stages. The poem is called “Waiting on a Heartbeat.” It is a beautiful piece of writing, and I would highly recommend this collection for any parents out there who would like to revisit the emotions of early parenthood. Several of the poems are addressed to one of Smith’s two children. The choice to write in second person narration makes everything more intimate and personal, drawing you in to the stories he tells and the scenes he paints with descriptive language. This one is on the shorter side too. If you’d like to dip your toe in a small pool of poetry, this one might be for you.

I have some more works to talk about, so I think I will save them for a second edition of “Poetry Salad” in the future. I know it’s quite common for people to have an aversion to poetry. If you’re one of those people, I hope you feel inspired to pick up one of these soon. My personal taste in poetry tends to veer toward clarity and conciseness and away from the esoteric and obscure. If you haven’t read much poetry before, these are good places to start. Until next month, bye for now!