Sensorial. The word is one that demands the mouth create. That sibilant “s,” the drawn-out middle syllable, the legato tail and how the penultimate vowel swoops into the last. It’s the sort those who love ASMR crave hearing, picked up by the sensitivity of a microphone—goosebumps rising on forearms.
Sensorial. Some may take this to mean experiential, indulgent, even overwhelming. Input which floods the nervous system. Taste. Touch. Smell. Hearing. Sight.
Sensorial. Brushes with the present moment. Anchors to the past.
Carolyne Van Der Meer is master of the sensorial. In her most recent collection, the author of four poetry books takes the reader on a sojourn through time, place, and perspective, percolating her keen observations with sensory data. But to what end? The poems in the aptly titled Sensorial tell the story of a woman reflecting on her father’s death after his battle with Parkinson’s. Reflecting is impossible without memory, and we readers watch, smell, listen, taste, touch, and process along with her.
Sensory memories are goldfish-brained—stored for a couple seconds before being translated into a format compatible with memory and associated with an experience (WebMD).
Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease which affects a person’s ability to interact with their world through a loss of muscle control, balance, and sensory function.
Van Der Meer is a poet who deftly draws mindfulness from memory.
The collection opens with “Finding Atlantis,” a dreamlike walk across an atoll which foreshadows the journey ahead. In it, the speaker asks “How do you walk on an atoll? / Is it too deep? / If I follow the curve / will I cut my feet on coral?” (3), and these lilting lines belong to those who seek. We are told “cutting your feet is a choice.” What I love about this poem is Van Der Meer’s propensity for weaving observation into her work—suffering, homelessness, female archetypes, and the death of a father—all touchstones within the collection—manifest in this poem, which despite its questing atmosphere, imply reflection and memory for they must have come first to now be summarized. Van Der Meer’s poems always appear with a note of hope: “Months later I walk across the atoll. My feet / don’t bleed. My father swims in the lagoon / and before he leaves me for good, / he waves.” After all, Atlantis has been found, rather than lost.
Place is certainly one way Sensorial engages the reader. The collection comprises three sections: Navigation, Exploration, Connection. We travel the globe, visiting a “windswept beach” in “Dominican Pantoum” (8), or a Parisian patio in “At Pizza Vesuvio, Avenue Des Champs-Elysees” (23). But we also move through time, overhearing a conversation about Protestant and Catholic tensions with a woman who “wonders / how long it will be / before she stops / looking over her shoulder” in “Falls Road Pub, Belfast November 1998” (10) or a childhood memory of a father’s relationship with music in “Johnny Cash, Ottawa Ex, 1979.” An intriguing addition, we get poems which situate us based on subject, such as “Epilepsy, Corner of McGill and St-Maurice” (9) and “Gratitude, Corner of De La Gauchetière and Cote” (66). These matter-of-fact titles are akin to journal entry headers, which makes it clear: Van Der Meer wants us to consider the memory of the feeling as a means of orientation, just as much as the classic five senses, and the juxtaposition of words like “epilepsy” or “gratitude” with locations or times does exactly that.
Van Der Meer’s poetry is selectively punctuated. Lines run on, defying grammar’s law until they catch on a comma or dash. The effect is of an influx of sensory information—a stream-of-consciousness reflecting the reliving of a memory. Consider the gorgeous opening stanza from “Angels We Have Heard on High”: “Evening flight home gossamer clouds out the window / she remembers long ago exploring her mother’s underwear drawer on the/ hunt for coral lipstick Chanel N°5 decanters silk stockings with clips”. “Evening flight” situates us on a plane, and “gossamer clouds” becomes the sensory stimuli linking that moment to this woman’s memory of her sexual awakening. The line breaks lend structure while preserving this sense of momentum Van Der Meer has carefully curated. The sibilance of “decanters,” “silk stockings,” and “clips” infuses the poetic atmosphere with a decadence. Though seated with the speaker on the plane, our curiosity too is piqued by the decadence of the mother’s drawer. Looking back, “evening flight” takes on a new meaning. We remember too.
Memory is sensory. We don’t remember the strict idea of a thing. Neither do we remember an objective play by play of the memory. Memory is impressionistic—it shifts and settles. We remember the memory of the memory. We remember what stood out—the filtered stimuli the vibrancy of which resonated with us: the taste of “pecorino and black pepper swathing / thick squared noodles / that slip along my palate (“The Roman Waiter” 20); the smell of “This rambling farmhouse with creaking floorboards / Its perfume of must and decay (“Visiting the Frost Place, Franconia, New Hampshire” 45); the touch of “the elegant oblong leaves between our / teeth” (“The Granby Gardener” 54); or the sight of oxblood boots “with wooden heels and metal studs up the sides” (“Buying Boots, Plateau Mont-Royal” 60.) Impressions are gateways to emotion. We don’t simply feel love, happiness, sadness, anger—a child’s smile triggers feelings of love; a painting in a gallery transports us. Our brains encode what matters.
But it doesn’t end there. It’s not just about the sensory experience and the memory it creates. It’s about what we do with our memories, how they inform our present-day decisions, our feelings about the people we encounter, places we visit, those we come to love. The narrator’s relationship with her father is Sensorial’s crux. “She was never really close to him. He was the one / who disrupted the harmony / with loud silences, deliberate and calculating, / designed to simultaneously elicit fear and guilt, / his unsolicited curses and verbal lacerations fuelling / an altered view of her younger self” (“Parkinson’s Disease” 68). One of my favourite things about Van Der Meer’s writing is her ability to give voice to the complexity of familial relationships without villainizing or compromising anyone’s humanity. The reader understands the father’s manipulative silences, the daughter’s perception of them and of herself, the tension infusing their interactions.
Van Der Meer has a habit of ending on a wise musing—an observation about the scene you’ve witnessed unfold, a sage leaf to chew. It comes out in the details she employs, which seem tertiary at first glance—supportive to the narrative of each poem—but actually are the main event. “At St. Lawrence Park, Brockville” is a nostalgic moment in a child’s summer as she watches her mother “sunning on a beach towel / leaning on a graceful hip later replaced / watching her daughter learn the dog paddle” (71). Only in this stanza are we thrust into the present through the realization the little girl Kate is thinking of her mother in her youth, “exquisite in a retro bikini” and by the end of the poem we learn that “but for a titanium hip not much changed.” The memory is potent, but especially in its ability to inform the present moment, where and when we are left to imagine Kate, decades later, thinking tenderly of her mother; the point being not ways in which time have whittled her down, but rather how what matters continues to shine through.
The process of building memory doesn’t end until we do. Sensorial is a memento vitae: a reminder of the joy amidst the suffering of life; a bid to be kinder to those around us, and to ourselves.
Willow Loveday Little's work has appeared in places such as The Dalhousie Review, The Selkie's Very Much Alive: Stories of Resilience anthology, HAL, The League of Canadian Poets chapbook series, yolk literary, and On Spec. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University and is the author of the poetry collection (Vice) Viscera, out with Cactus Press. Willow lives in Montreal where she is working on a novel thanks to the generosity of The Canada Council for the Arts.