Review -Toronto Star
From Paris on up to Nunavik
Two very different notions of journey

Every book is a journey, in a sense. Readers tag along in hopes of discovery, whether through a fresh look at the familiar or a peek into the previously unknown. Between Lovers and Snow Formations use different forms of transport, but both take us places.

A line on the acknowledgements page of Calgarian Sheri-D Wilson's Between Lovers declares: "These poems are to be read aloud." Point taken, for this fifth collection by a veteran of the spoken word scene depends heavily on the three "Rs" of oral literature (repetition, rhyme and rhythm). Don't look for metrically tidy, emotionally contained eloquence here. These poems are sprawling, hyperbolic and libertine-spirited.

They are ostensibly in the voice of Leticia Knight, a woman whose life spans the 20th century and three continents. She dallies in the Paris of the Surrealists; rides Alberta's ranges and the peaks and valleys of modern-day romance; and crosses the colour line in post-apartheid South Africa. In truth, this alter ego isn't particularly "altered," for she has Wilson's usual spunky joie de vivre and flamboyance.

"Anthem To My Daughter" is typically exuberant: "Let's howl off the tip of the Tower Eiffel, / fall to our knees in laughters' hurting-hell, / universelle, trembling immortelle ... You're not a bit mild. / You're a salt wit child. / With a gigajoule giggle ..."

Wilson's work is the literary equivalent of a feather boa and sequined dress (daringly low-cut, naturally). It's not subtle, but it's fun — and a provocative challenge to conventional notions about women and sexuality. When she gets serious (in a suite about South Africa), the poems lose some zip. But they do show there's more to this writer than rip-roaring entertainment.

Both the mood and method of St. Lambert, Quebec poet Carolyn Marie Souaid's Snow Formations, her third collection, are entirely different. Based on her experiences teaching in northern Quebec, it features pared-down, imagistic intensity and an ironic tone. The first section, pre-departure, conveys her boredom and lack of fulfilment. Then comes her flight north: "my fissured, brown / liver-spotted towns / vaporized in the dark air / and when I woke, the world had accumulated again /outside my window / the strapping, white, freshness of it / shovelling life / back into my eyes."

Of course, this is a familiar ritual (reject civilization, reclaim the senses in an encounter with Natives and Nature). But Souaid is no sentimentalist; wary of easy answers, she's as cautionary as she is celebratory about the North and Inuit life.

The images are particularly vivid — and unsettling — when she writes of the natural world. "Cabin Fever(1)" evokes a feeling of menace as winter closes in ("the grey void of water, / the one wrong slip to certain death ... the cold shoulder / of snow against the door, the house"). Elsewhere, she writes of the solstice: "Earth suddenly sped up a notch while / Hades breathed deeply from the night between the rocks."

In one poem, Souaid invites the reader to "feed on the world, / one breath at a time." That invitation is made compelling by these vivid, brooding poems.
 

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