Kim Fahner : Tend, by Kate Hargreaves

Tend, Kate Hargreaves
Book*hug Press, 2022

 

 

 

 

Tend makes you think, right away, of what you need to tend to in your daily life. What are the things that make you stop and mind them, the ones that you take note of in your head, your heart, or in writing (if you’re a writer)? The poems in this collection are populated by tiny pieces of mosaic-like imagery that often echo through the book. What pieces of our lives are broken, and how do we manage to cobble them together into something with a holistic structure so that there is a centre of some sort to hold onto when things dissolve?

These are personal poems but might also be very reflective of the pandemic years, as well. How do we manage, when we are ripped out of the fabric of society, to isolate? Also, how do we heal if we are broken, either physically or mentally? Time, Hargreaves suggests in Tend, is a healer most of us can’t even fully comprehend the force of as we move through challenging periods in human history. That awareness will come after the broken things have healed, she suggests.

In the first poem, “the young ones,” Hargreaves writes “we are the young ones/and we have come for your sons/our pants stretch tight over thighs and button high/we mix patterns and clash colours.” The young ones “burn popcorn for dinner” and “cut hair with nail scissors.” The frame of the poem is circular, with an echo that reads: “we have come for your sons/to wash away their potential/we cannot garden/we do not try/but oh, how we laugh.” What interests one generation will likely not fascinate the next, but each one has its own sense of spontaneity and specificity.

Hargreaves is extremely fluid and capable in her ability to move from one curiosity—with a keen sense of close, detailed observation—to another. In one poem, she writes about the pain of having an IUD being implanted as part of “an early gift for February 14.” The T shape “floats in a world of pink and pinker/and fluid red.” It is the “Autoreply to a dick pic” and then becomes “A rogue letter [that] bumps against bladder walls.” The tiny device looks deceptively simple in brochure ads for the product, but then “dug its way through my uterus last Monday,/wiggled through walls and poked out the other side,/an earring pushed through a years-sealed hole.” Not simple, and often a painful procedure.

In several poems, there are references to scars, swollen ankles, cracking bones, scabs beginning to weep, along with allusions to the fragility of the physical human body. The human parts of our bodies that can be injured, that wear down, misbehave, cause us to age and someday fail, are the ones that are addressed, and then mirrored by fragments of other images, including ones of “a bitten lip/rough, damp, and threatening to split,” chrysanthemums that need to be deadheaded, words that are stripped “like veins from a leg/or bones from a fish,” and even a “hospice for dolls with split faces.” The theme of things breaking, or splitting, runs through the book. This can be seen in poems like “stains,” “a reproduction,” and “origin stories for a scar.” In “unsolicited,” for instance, the poet writes: “I don’t know who finds themselves splitting, but//I don’t know whose edges are fraying, but/--a cobbler can patch up those seams.”

The mosaic fragments of brokenness, though, find their own new hopeful roots as the imagery includes aspects of growth and renewal as Hargreaves writes: “Some people only take root near water/tugged toward walkable riversides.” Soon enough, “elderflower wine takes root.” In “bolt,” lettuce does just that, rushing “to seed and tipped in the storm.” In this poem, there is the lesson that “Some things just need time.” Patience is something we humans often don’t have, but these poems speak of how we must come to a sense of balance—to know of endings and then to somehow see beginnings there, as well.

Places of origin and the passage of time are defined in “what remains,” with the photographic memories that speak from childhood—marked by the ages of seven and nine—and by the turns of seasons: “August, perhaps June—my face was red, burnt/mid-afternoon by the looks of the shadows.” Time is of the essence, but also cannot be rushed. Memory is either gilded or dampened, and then the mind plays with what it recollects as we age, breaking and healing repeatedly.

In Tend, Kate Hargreaves has written poems that remind us to care for the broken parts of ourselves and of our society. Her work is rooted in the physicality of the body, but also in the specificity of the place where she lives, in Windsor. Tend showcases Hargreaves’ keen observation of the world around her as she collects images—the minutiae of everyday living—in a poetic inventory that speaks of the passage of time, mortality, isolation, and our own fragility.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her latest book of poems is Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). She is the Ontario Representative for The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-24), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim's first novel, The Donoghue Girl, will be published by Latitude 46 Publishing in Spring 2024. She may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com

rob mclennan : tend: poems, by Kate Hargreaves

tend: poems, Kate Hargreaves
book*hug, 2022

 

 

 

 

The second full-length poetry collection by Windsor, Ontario poet, designer and roller derby maven Kate Hargreaves, following her collection of short fiction, Talking Derby: Stories from a Life on Eight Wheels (Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 2012), young adult novel Jammer Star (Vancouver BC: Orca Book Publishers, 2019) and full-length poetry debut, Leak (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2014), is tend: poems (Book*hug, 2022). Through tend, Hargreaves writes first-person narrative short form lyrics on city gardens, self-care, rootedness and patterns; she writes of tentative splits, scars, overgrowth and frayed edges. “The x-ray tech shoots film of my insides,” she writes, as part of the poem “an early gift for February 14” (a poem that begins on page fourteen, curiously enough), “says I can pay five dollars to download the snaps / from home. / save them to my ‘personal PC’ to respond to / requests to sendnudes. // Lower torso minus clothes, / minus skin minus organs. // Just bones and a / white      T / Autoreply to a dick pic.” Throughout the collection, her poems offer tics and staccato through a gymnastic collage of language, sound and syncopation reminiscent of the work of Christine McNair (who also provides a back cover blurb for this particular work), one that speaks to propel with breakneck speed. Listen to the cadences of the poem “pattern,” for example (a poem I would be eager to hear aloud), that writes: “Turnaround, loop back. Beg together (tog) again. Sk ahead to third / date. Cut off loose ends. // Sl off. Reduce space. Double2tog in F(our)P(oster). / reptog. / reptog. // Sk single hookups. 1 st in time sv (save) 9.”

corvidae

Ask me instead for my thoughts on birds forget scars for the mirror
stage of corvids unravelling contempt for crows their
          feathers in excess too loud too sharp too too
coarse to gather round shrieking in grief
oil spill and rumours
                 of eyes lost to beaks

Set in five sections—“unsolicited,” “pattern,” “tend, “other snaps” and “what remains”—the poems in tend move from pointed phrase to longer lyric stretches, almost set in a sequence of breathless rushes, writing on intimacy, awkwardness, care and connection. “sweet woodruff for humanity hewn from its temporary bed,” she writes, to open the second part of the sequence “bolt,” “forget zinnia seeds until they sprout absent friends / what’s a weed bit a yarrow / thyme under grub-eaten leaves crawling for / blue salvia, I think of you until I don’t […]” There are ways that Hargreaves utilizes rhythm throughout the poems assembled here that is quite interesting, allowing a breathless, halting or otherwise propulsive patter to further her poems as much as anything involving language, meaning or purpose. In the sequence “other people’s dogs,” the narrative of each short burst propels forward through curling back up into itself and inside out in really sharp and delightful ways. There are some really magnificent and powerful shifts, eddys and pivots in these poems, offering a subtle and delightful patter blend of sound and rhythm across some dark and difficult meanings. tend is a collection of poems that examine and articulate the weight of expectation, daily tasks, instincts and ghosts; Hargreaves writes of routine, gardening and a relationship to nature, including her ongoing wish to compost (which may never actually happen, as the poem suggests), as she offers in the poem “I will be a person who composts,” that begins: “who buys brown-spotted eggs direct from the chickens / Why never scoops out the blood spots / or tosses shells in the trash. / I will wash and sort my recycling. / I will bundle cardboard with rough string and gift-tie it / in neat bows. / I will cook fresh soups from scratch.” In many ways, tend is an optimistic and occasionally joyful collection of dark complexities, centred around care, from self-care to gardening, and the ways in which we wish to interact with the wonderfully complex and convoluted worlds of nature, other humans, poems and ourselves.

rerun

wild horses can’t make matter-of-fact my hand in your pocket scarf
over face thinking you must be quoting the Sundays version and
not the original since we heard it while making dinner from the
living-room tv last night on the credits of that one episode where
she finally gets the guy to dance and then he leaves—it’s just that I
don’t have much time writing out Spanish flash cards and adding
cartoon birds to the margins, but soon it’ll be just poems, not a book
or anything, just nouns:

plum
                               centipede

          desk lamp

 

                               muskrat

 

                                                                        tea kettle
                                         trousers

 

 

 

 

 

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair (and recently visited the dentist). The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include the poetry collection the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022), and a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022), as well as a new chapbook through paper view books, and another forthcoming in November through Rose Garden Press. He is currently pushing to complete (or at least further) a novel once the children return to in-person school, starting this week. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Kate Hargreaves : Two poems

Lux model recall

Extreme Steam Venting™.

touch

hot surfaces

touch

handles & knobs

hands, face scalding

(any pressure can be hazardous).

Serious, necessary pressure

may cause a fire or

risk of clogging.

Immerse in

applesauce, pearl barley, or rhubarb.

Do not release outdoors

expose too directly to sunshine or oil splash.

Float down the lock

(extreme caution must be used when moving).

Foam, froth and sputter

hot oil

place hands or face in

hot liquids

before putting on or taking off parts.

Do not immerse persons in juices.

To disconnect:
remove water and rust

Time is not recommended to

reduce physical, sensory, mental capacities.

To delay scalding injury

serious damage (any damage)

hang over the edge

for complete release.

you don’t say

That is to say:        
                     —floors sprout hair overnight

                     —grout wears down to dust

                     —take time to deadhead mums

                     —admit they’ll never live

                     —plan for obsolescence

                     —roll out another crust

                     —invest in washing line

                     —release static in sleep

                     —bleach over concrete

                     —seal in that coat

                     —tug the roots from their ends

                     —start at the baseboards, work up

                     —roads are all horizontal

                     —release pressure, keep safe

                     —paper over the clean out

                     —bury heads in dust

                     —choke on skin cells

                     —pull back from the crowd

                     —silence is not unreasonable

                     —shake twice to erase

                     —everything is returnable

                     —set friendships in wax

                     —weather seal doors & windows

                     —press hands over ears

                     —layer shirts & shirts

                     —draw circles in tight

                     —grow ever smaller

                     —lay down in the weeds

                     —build fences without gates

                     —stack hay bales for cats

                     —no need to reach out

                     —dig basements: build down

                     —fast circles of hands

                     —plant boots into soil

                     —pull apart like warm bread

                     —forget to be asked

                     —bundle up trash

                     —leave enough space

                     —consume your own burden

                     —cut ties with ghosts

                     —re-write old letters

                     —pre-empt/bow out

Kate Hargreaves is a book designer, writer, and academic writing advisor in Windsor, Ontario. Her books include Leak (Book*hug), Jammer Star (Orca), and Talking Derby (Black Moss). She is usually a roller derby skater and amateur cyclist but is currently recovering from a very broken leg. Find her online at CorusKate.com.