Re: Wild Her, Shannon Webb-Campbell
Book*hug, 2025
The tides of Shannon Webb-Campbell’s last poetry collection, Lunar Tides, continue to ebb and flow in her new book, Re: Wild Her. Here is a poet who moves between worlds and dimensions, seeing through things as she journeys, searching for more knowledge, wisdom, and magic. It’s about swimming, too, which is something I love to do, so I understand how a swimmer’s entry into water worlds like ponds, rivers, lakes, and oceans can pull at you with a power that is equal to that of the moon at the tides. Webb-Campbell draws from her queer, Mi’kmaq, and settler identity, delving into the teachings of her Elders, but also using ancient tools of divination like the Tarot.
In her work, the poet subverts the traditional—and very patriarchal—understanding of what it is that witches do. They may be often referred to in traditional literature and lore as ‘crones,’ but Webb-Campbell upends the incorrect stereotype to uncover the truths of wise women and oracles. In doing so, she invites readers to dive into their own maternal bloodlines to explore their origins. She conjures ancient female power and channels it through her words—embodying the strength and fluidity of the Divine Feminine—so that her poetry becomes a portal through which readers are invited to explore their own inner depths.
The first poem of the collection, “Her Eros Revisited” sets the tone for an immersion into sensuality and a feminist reclamation of raw eroticism. Divided into parts, the poem moves from “a transatlantic flight over midnight” that “catapults us through moonlight,” to Paris. Once there, the speaker says, “I write long after Anais Nin/for a world that does not exist…I am now a sultry femme/a visionary sprit/who splits, sips, and swills.” Reading this sequence feels a bit like going on a pub crawl through a city you haven’t visited before—it asks you to enter the journey of exploration. The final piece is celebratory in tone: “reading E.E. Cummings’s erotic poems out loud/under covers we tangle like root vegetables/wrapped up in borrowed sheets.”
In “Sirens Off Capri,” the speaker transforms into a siren, “making love Calypso deep/in the underwater cavity.” There’s a sense of escapism here, too, in poems like “Transatlantique,” when the poet writes: “I want to become Transatlantique/drape my spirit in Barbier costume/tango between Halifax and Paris/flow in elaborate gowns/held up by whalebone corsets…swirl with womankind/rebellious godmothers who crossed the grey ocean” to break traditions and spend “their years living in surrealist motifs.” Re: Wild Her travels the world, touching down in a variety of places around the globe, so the notion of travel, of being transported and even transformed, is a theme that is very much central to the poems presented here.
The poet draws on both her Mi’kmaq and settler heritage, highlighting a series of female muses throughout the collection. In “Off Isla Mujeres (Bay of Women),” the speaker says: “kindreds comb beaches/for relics of fertility/swim in medicinal waters/before the Mayan moon goddess/we offer our feminine forms. Swimming is depicted as both a simple immersion into water but is also elevated to something sensual and sacred, something transformational. In “Seawater Portals,” there is a “womblike cave for healing/once ancient Mayan bathing rituals/a portal between the living and the dead.” There are references to selkies, and to the fish women who “emerge from the waters’ offering/after a trinity of swims all in one day/baptism by sea.” and the speaker wonders, “what if my root system is stars?” There is also a recognition of how certain cultures are similar when, in “Ceremony Collaboration,” Webb-Campbell writes: “at this time of ecological crisis/look to Elders and Buddhists/wildflowers who know meditation.” The poet enters the natural world to highlight the beauty, and the sacred, but also to warn of what climate crisis is doing to the environment. The fluidity of the poetry in Re: Wild Her is also reflected in the way that the speaker immerses themselves in landscape. In “Nitap,” a poem for Douglas Walbourne-Gough, and referencing his book, Island, the speaker says: “you are made of rocky earth…you remind me I’m made of wind/wild like a partridgeberry/born of moose calls.” The final stanza of the poem speaks to the connections between the intertwined roles of human and environment: “in our kinship conversations/your voice fills me with island/a dialect that calls me back.”
Webb-Campbell continues to examine the way in which language is fluid, exploring how traditional language plays a role in her work and life. In the poem, “Pink Up Parched Earth”, which is on the left side of the book, a Mi’kmaw translation is on the opposite page, so you can see both as you read. The translation is by Joan Milliea, and does not follow the stanzaic structure of the English original. This reminds the reader that meanings can shift and transform between two languages, even if the central essence is common. It’s a reminder, in many ways, of how we should live in peace with one another, and how we should try to continue to work towards reconciliation in a collaborative way.
If you’ve read this far, I’ll say (openly) that I have been a fan of Webb-Campbell’s work for a while now. I was keenly waiting for this collection to be released, and it’s more of what I loved about the poems I read in Lunar Tides. If that book of poems examines love, loss, and grieving, then this one does more of that, but also extends its reach to encompass the journey from brokenness to healing. That change and healing process takes time—sometimes decades or centuries—but Re: Wild Her is hopeful and empowers the reader to work through their own broken parts, encourages them to journey both outwards and inwards, and allows for that fluidity of exploration that is part of a life well lived.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her newest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). Her next book of poems, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. She recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. As well, Kim was named as a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She may be reached via her website at http://www.kimfahner.com