845 Press Chapbooks, 2019
There was a time, decades
ago, that I lived close enough to Algonquin Park and that near north of Ontario
that I would often find myself slipping up the highways past Bancroft, past Maynooth
to that great wild place that seems to rest at the centre of Ontario’s notions
of itself. And it was as glorious and breathtaking as the best A.Y. Jackson or
JEH MacDonald painting, but it was also mundane, infuriating, and full of the
humour and pleasure of being loose in the world. I suppose if one were to
experiment with the physical place that is Algonquin Park and do so in the form
of poetry, one would only be successful in doing so by encapsulating all of
that in words. And this is precisely London-based writer Brittany Renaud
accomplishes in this deeply experiential poetry chapbook.
I say that the work is experiential in that Renaud utilizes
the truly everyday aspects of our speech and writing acts to craft an ongoing
engagement with the physical place of Algonquin. These pieces come in the form
transcribed snippets of conversations, receipts from travel, lists, and notes.
Take for example “Camping by the Numbers 2016,” in which the speaker lists
dates, times, prices and items in transaction lists that while odd in first
light give way to an arching narrative of a voyage. The reader revisits this
camping trip in the very familiar fashion that often follows campers or
travelers around for years. This is the receipt trail we often carry with us.
Each one of them glimmers to the experiences around those transactions.
Make no mistake that
these are not just simply found poems, but rather wonderfully constructed
engagements with their subject material. We as readers are brought through
their familiarity to the experience of an act visit and trip through the park.
Yet the strength and reliability afforded to the collection of these foundish
poem moments opens up a seeming veracity of more sustained prose sections such
as “It Was a Dark and Scary Night.” Here we witness the absurd violence that
Canadians often hint at existing in the woods. With flesh hungry trees and
flamethrower toting park rangers, the exercises reads as possible, somewhat horrifying,
The form here does mirror the campside joke and story telling experienced in
campfires. And in the end we are left with the hazy sense that even most absurd
could be real because it was spoken into the world.
In its experiential and rooted nature I see much in common
between Renaud’s work here and the great American nature poets of Gary Snyder
and Philip Whalen. All three of these writers take us along on their voyage
into the world outside our towns and cities. Although Renaud’s work does not follow
into the romantic vistas of zen infused nature of her American counterparts,
there is an openness to her work that lets the experience of it all to filter
in between what is being shared and who is receiving it. In this way the work
provides for the same sort of meditative space that the physical space of
Algonquin affords all so many of her visitors. And in this, I would say that
you would be remiss if did not spend time with this work by emerging Souwesto
wordsmith.
D.A. Lockhart is the author Devil
in the Woods (Brick Books, 2019), Wenchikaneit Visions (Black Moss
Press, 2019), and Breaking Right (Porcupine's Quill, 2020). His work has
appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including Best Canadian Poetry 2019,
The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The
Fiddlehead, and Belt. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the
Thames First Nation. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong where he is
the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.
