Goose Lane Editions, 2019
In
Matthew Walsh’s brilliant debut collection, the reader can sit on the other
side of his confessional booth and listen to nostalgic city-portraits intercut
with potato farming! Walsh’s incisive wit dissects family dynamics while trying
to reconcile their lineage of farming with inner desires unfamiliar to the
Canadian countryside.
My father comes
from people who learned to talk
the potato into
growing more potatoes
to
reconcile:
I think my dad
liked me because he didn’t know what I wanted was to be
Pamela Anderson in
the red bathing suit, circa Baywatch theme song credits
The
importance of place is expressed through queering geographies, a fresh
re-framing of Canada viewed through a kaleidoscope of travelogues. Walsh’s
writing approaches the superstice of everyday living with relentless awe and
surprise and disintegrates it into absurdity. Chaotic comedy persists through
the darkest moments and shines as a beacon of maturity at the face of
adversity.
I had
interior-decorated poems with metaphors hanging
all over them, was
told simply by straight peers ‘stick to the fluffy
topics’ Like Drag
Brunch recaps, or?
They
portray the rural Canadian family as nurturers who can bring barren soil to
flower; farmers for whom the land represents an endless cycle of life and
death. The rural Canadian farmer as rural Canadian parent, natural growers who
use their agricultural skills to raise children.
Walsh
rediscovers the stasis of nostalgia through restless kinesis of his words that
beautifully parallel his movement through cities, landscapes and imagery. Each
page of These are not the potatoes of my
youth is simultaneously a love letter and a break-up poem to cities across
Canada. Walsh shows their admiration without dependence, their love without
obsession, their lust without artifice. Multiple portrayals of friends and
friendships pepper the manuscript, short silhouettes of all those who wove
themselves into this colorful tapestry of cityscapes and fleeting skylines.
This book is a loving ode to all who stuck by us in dark times, those who
helped us and those whom we helped.
I took pictures of
her black eye with a Konica camera
so the police
would finally see
her partner. She
would grab my throat
to feel my lymph
nodes when she lived
with us and read
them, trying to figure out who I was
in a past life.
In their wonderful debut, Walsh is
constantly rediscovering the self in different landscapes, exploring the self
in relation to the environment. Walsh redefines character based on surroundings
and grounds experiences to the past through cultural touchstones. They
delicately balance the bitter with the sweet and laughable. Poems flow with
inertia, and the reader is carried further into the story even after the last
line of a poem is uttered.
and this is my
animal pose, this is the look for me, it’s animal
and I ask what is
up do you have a manual on how to behave
and I am all
fours, asking not to be or not be. But--
I can be this
poem. I can be wilderness.
Khashayar Mohammadi is an
Iranian-born Toronto-based writer and translator.