what we know so far is… ,
Conor Mc Donnell
Buckrider, 2025
Parts of Conor Mc Donnell’s what we know so far is… remind me of some of James Joyce’s work. That’s a hefty sentence with which to begin a poetry book review, I know, but it’s true. Reading Joyce demands that you be patient, take time to think and read parts out loud. Sometimes, questions will be posed and not answered. That, perhaps, is why I like Joyce so much—because he demands that you toss off expectations of what you will be entering into and asks you to trust him. Joyce also loves to play with language, sliding around with puns and references to things that require the care of a reader who admires complexity in text.
Conor Mc Donnell is similar in that he plays with language and its slippery meaning, writing what equates to a long poem in book form. He includes content about science and medicine, pop culture and history, sense of place and geography, migration, and then considers how fluid language is, how it crosses oceans and evolves and shapeshifts over time. What this means is that the reader needs to sink into the poems, marinate in them and not rush through it with a too brief reading. This is why I love reading poetry in the first place: I want to escape and sink into a self-contained world within a collection.
In the “Prologue,” Mc Donnell references the pandemic, writing of a virus, but also writing of how vocabulary, and language itself “remains mostly recognizable.” The poet goes on to write “we can’t calibrate so instead we medicate. We drown the noise around/the signal but fail to perceive that which we can’t measure and frame.” Throughout the collection, the poet returns to consider how words and language work, writes: “I believe words are thirsty predators: pack hunters:/to be seen is death to the herd,/to be heard means death-en-scene.//Words cower in the long grass of language…” When everything else seems wildly uncontrollable and problematic, inside and outside of self, then the pattern of language is a recognizable net into which a writer might fall. That net, though, is not fixed but instead stretches to incorporate new and dynamically shifted meanings
Poems like III, XIV, XXVI, and XXX are ones that speak to the Irish language, to Gaelic words and ideas. The shift between the traditions and language of Ireland to Canada reflects Mc Donnell’s own life’s journey. In III, the poet writes: “The Irish for harvest is Fomhar (it also means autumn)./I say, Autumn,/you think, Fall,/as in: We harvest what autumns from the trees.” In VI, a family “huddled at the O.R. door” read the word “Harvest” and it references an organ donor harvest. In XIV, Mc Donnell tells the reader that the Irish word for ghost is taibhse, means show. He then plays with possible renditions of how that word can change meaning so that “Words worm their way in” so that “We criss-cross misplaced realities/to timeshare borders of purgatory.” Nothing is clear or controllable, and those multiple meanings and misplaced realities are shifty essences.
In XXVI, Mc Donnell speaks to other Irish words, referencing how “after a thousand years the English still call//me Paddy—my father’s name,” and speaks to the idea that the Irish word for shadow is “also our word for shelter.” There is no fixed translation, and there is comfort in that. A word or phrase can have multiple incarnations or guises, can slip between centuries and geographies without being pinned down: “If assonance & cadence/are foundation enough for poetry, play Dublin songs for all//involved:Dublin Dubloon City of Moonz Wake the Devil,/tell him Moon is up. Women, draw down & gather power//enough to mould monsters into birds.”
Mc Donnell, in XXX, writes of the Irish word for truth, thinking about how “the phonetic Irish for truth is fear in you.” What he’s doing is examining parts of language, and linguistics, to pull at the strands of meaning—encouraging his readers to do the same thing: to examine bigger ideas and consider how they are not always as steadfast as initially understood.
A pediatric physician, Mc Donnell writes, too, of his work in a hospital. The speaker describes themselves as “weary, bone-tired” and tells how they experience “pain where there was no injury.” The worlds of work, no matter where we live or in which field we plant ourselves and our career, are demanding, and one would imagine that a physician’s responsibilities must weigh heavy. The speaker says: “I grew accustomed to this being another part of me/but you say it is something I can no longer live with.” While a reader may not know what a physician’s burden is, they will likely relate to this push and pull of work-life balance, and of weighing out the value of time, care, career, and of the worth of a life lived beyond the confines of a scheduled workday.
There are other brilliant Canadian poets who are also physicians, including Monica Kidd, Shane Nielson, and Laura Zacharin just to name a few. All of them seem to explore the world in unique ways, and poetry serves as the vehicle that allows them the scope and sequence to undertake this exploration. There is, too, a place that poetry should hold in medical circles, perhaps revealing that the literary arts—especially poetry—can be used to express things that might be (at first sight) difficult to express with words.
Conor Mc Donnell’s What We Know So Far Is… is a book of poems that reminds this reviewer of a complex underpainting: there are layers of words, vocabulary, phrases, language, imagery, and meaning that encourage a reader to delve into possibilities. Here, the reader is invited into the poetic sequence, is asked to think about how there are multiple meanings in the simplest of daily happenings. This beautifully crafted and structured collection does not offer a reductionist reading of the world through a poet’s eyes but rather encourages the reader to go beyond what they know so far. Imagine, the poet seems to be positing, what else lies beyond that.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent books include The Pollination Field (Turnstone, 2025) and The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). She is the Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) and recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. Kim may be reached via her author website.
