Cecily
Nicholson. Talonbooks, $16.95 CAN/US paperback (104p) ISBN 978-0-88922-856-6
I have circled the same spot over and
over
walls rise and fall to better walls
mortgaging future conditional
pledge of properties
outcome larger
drain
toward doubt
reverse time lapsed
residences un-construct
lots widen and fields un-furlough
seep marsh in, firs righted
cane recoils apparitional tangles
transparent
fluid congeals, opacity, a qualitative shift
In
the form of the book-length long poem, Vancouver poet Cecily Nicholson
documents a geographic space in her second trade poetry collection, From the Poplars (Vancouver BC:
Talonbooks, 2014). Nicholson writes Poplar Island, a small unpopulated island
in the Fraser River in New Westminster, a suburb of Vancouver. The former home
of the Qayqayt, a people devastated by smallpox in the late 19th
century, Poplar Island eventually fell under the ownership of the British
Columbia government, and much of the island subsequently became a massive
shipyard. Unoccupied for some time now, the revived (and displaced/homeless)
Qayqayt First Nation has been working to regain control of the island as their
traditional space. As she writes: “history that no one / holds of interiors
only imagined [.]”
pages damaged restored discoloured
stained or detached wholly or partially obscured by errata slips and tissue,
etc., are refilmed for the best possible quality of the image. the following
diagrams illustrate the method
There
has been a great deal of literary and critical work over the past few years
dealing with native land claims and unceded territory all over Vancouver and
throughout British Columbia, most recently around the 2010 G20 meetings and
subsequent protests. For her part, Nicholson writes through and around Poplar
Island, working from historical research, observation and an eye towards social
justice, exploring what Dorothy Livesay famously called the “documentary poem,”
providing a kind of poetic, historical and critical portrait of the island, its
people and those who have impacted upon either or both. Her poem, quite
literally, begins with documents on and about the space, exploring the
genealogical traces of, as Jeff Derksen describes, “the history of use and
ownership of a seemingly surplus space,” and provides an intricate collage of
details, from lyric to historical correspondence to the cold fact of numbers. As
she writes: “stand up now, the wasteland
to maintain / your houses they pull
down now / stand up now // your houses they pull down / to fright poor men in town // gentry must come down / and the poor shall wear the crown [.]” Hers
is not simply an uncritical description or documentary but one that speaks to
the removal of various native peoples from their land for the sake of
shipyards, and a long poem that does more than simply replicating information,
but using that information to help shape a series of collage movements in the
form of the long poem.
Whereas, a petition has been presented
by the Corporation of the City of New Westminster setting forth that the lands
intended to be granted to the said Corporation by the “New Westminster City
Lands Act, 1884,” are therein erroneously described, and that doubts have
arisen whether the said Act is effectual to vest the said lands in the said
Corporation in the manner contemplated by the said Act;
Vancouver
and its surrounding area have long produced poets engaged with a blend of
social justice and language experimentation, from recent collections by Mercedes
Eng, Jeff Derksen, nikki reimer and Stephen Collis to prior works by a whole
slew of writers including Michael Turner, Daphne Marlatt, Maxine Gadd, Reg
Johanson, Marie AnnHarte Baker, Roy Miki, Roger Farr and Dorothy Trujillo Lusk,
with much of this and similar kinds of engagements around the Kootenay School
of Writers collective. In From the
Poplars, Cecily Nicholson engages a space that might not be commonly known
of outside of the immediate area of New Westminster, and questions the entire
idea of ownership upon a physical space, or even a population, as she writes:
“once harvest was done / harvest done worried some / worried men sing a worried
song // songs common in the red humming / their whole lives prayer or persons
likely to / become property spreading blacktop [.]” Or further on, where she
writes:
prices will please the highest bidder.
the purchaser shall be
entitled
and time shall be of the essence of the
contract
when the cable snaps
(June
2014)
Purchase
From the Poplars HERE.
