Griffin Poetry Prize 2011

Congratulations to Dionne Brand, Toronto's Poet Laureate, who won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for her 2010 collection Ossuaries. With the award, Brand also takes home the award's $75,000 purse – the richest in Canadian literature. 

The two other finalists for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize were former Parliamentary Poet Laureate John Steffler for his collection Lookout and Montreal's Suzanne Buffman for her collection The Irrationalist.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg, born in Tacoma, Washington, on the Griffin's international prize for her first collection of poetry, Heavenly Questions.

Other finalists in the international category were Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney for Human Chain, Khaled Matawa for his translation of Adonis' Selected Poems, and Philip Mosely for his translation of The Book of Snow by the late Belgian poet François Jacqmin.

All the finalists received $10,000 at the reading they gave last night and both winners then received an additional $65,000 in tonight's ceremony. 

Cover image shown from Dionne Brand's Ossuaries, published by McClelland and Steward

Red Shoes in the Rain

It's National Poetry Month, so every Monday in April I will be reviewing/discussing a book of Canadian poetry.

Compared to the other collections I've featured this month, Jan Conn's Red Shoes in the Rain is a relatively old one; it is also, perhaps, the most traditional of all the collections. Conn's poetry is heavily rooted in nature and emotion, and each poem is like a snapshot of a particular feeling, at a particular time, in a particular place. And, because Conn has travelled widely, that place could be anywhere from Niagara Falls, to Japan's Oki Islands, to a backyard, allowing the collection to hopscotch around.

What makes Red Shoes in the Rain is how vivid Conn's natural descriptions are. She tends to focus on similar elements – trees, clouds, and precipitation, in particular – but they are always specific to the scene. Conn's descriptions are never generic, which acts as a subtle reminder that we are not looking at a scene from a general point of view, but from her perspective specifically. In her poem "Choices," Conn writes about the Niagara Falls legends – the heroism of the barrel riders and the tight-rope walker, the despair of a mother who dropped her child – as though they are being discussed by friends. Here, the stilted conversation is heightened by slices of detail about where they are: "we walk between twisted trees / make starts of conversation. / wind whips sheets of snow / over dead grass; pares our faces / thin as paper." 

When Conn is at her best, her verses offer up an emotional response without needed to tell you what it should be. Although she sometimes slips and tells you exactly what her metaphor is meant to convey, she generally trusts her reader. Conn doesn't write complicated or abstract poems, or play overly with language; rather, she focuses on the sharpness of an image. Conn writes a lot about the feeling of post-relationship loss, that very real feeling that something is missing, or that you aren't where you should be: "I should be asleep. my body / is light, almost transparent. / the bones turn softly, dream / of waking in some other room."

This is the real attraction to Red Shoes in the Rain: it is honest and beautiful in a way that is almost painful, because all the description and emotion is filtered so close to Conn's heart. Although there are a few poems that feel written at arm's length, the majority of these pieces are about the deeply personal experience of moving on, and realizing again and again that you no longer belong where you once did. Conn is generous with her experiences, which makes this collection rather a guilty pleasure of a read.

Red Shoes in the Rain
by Jan Conn
First published in 1984 (cover image shown from Fiddlehead Poetry Books edition)

Bloom

It's National Poetry Month, so every Monday in April I will be reviewing/discussing a book of Canadian poetry.

One of the beautiful things about poetry is its ability to magnify and intensify its subjects, whether people, events, or both. On May 21, 1946, Canadian physicist Louis Slotin died while training his replacement on the Manhattan Project, Alvin Graves, who was also having an affair with Slotin's wife. In Bloom, Michael Lista makes this one day, and all the swirling undercurrents and emotions associated with it, come alive in a series of short poems. Or, maybe, a poetic cycle, because each poem leads into the next in a way that blurs the line between individual pieces on a related topic and one long poem with sections. Whichever way you read it, Bloom is an inventive and confusing and exciting book of poetry.

The collection opens in the morning – the two sections of the book are AM and PM – and the first voice we hear is of Slotin's wife. She is watching her husband leave for work: "You should have seen his overcoat today. My favourite of his. It was long and thick, hand-tailored, either plaid or polka dot, or maybe, fuck it all, flannel." It's a prose-poem and covers all the mundane and ordinary observations of a wife watching her husband leave for work. But don't be fooled, this is not a collection about domesticity; rather, it is a collection about moments, decisions, and observations. 

Prose poetry isn't the only style employed, either. Instead, Lista roams around, trying on the hats and styles of many different poets from all sorts of background – each inspiring writing dutifully noted at the bottom of the respective piece. This becomes kind of a game, actually, and seeing names such as Ted Hughes' return again and again, I wondered about the kinds of poems his verse inspired. It's rare to see someone's inspiration displayed baldly, and I adds another layer to each of the poems Lista writes. 

In many ways, Bloom feels more like a novella in verse than a straight collection of poetry – it has characters, it has recurring imagery and events, there are several plot lines all intertwined – and it is difficult to discuss just one piece out of context, because as intriguing as the individual poems are when read alone, this is a collection that begs to be read in one go. Although it can get a bit convoluted (the speakers of the poems switch around constantly), Bloom is a rewarding, enjoyable, and at times, salacious read, and one that may challenge your ideas of what poetry can be about.

Bloom
by Michael Lista
First published in 2010 (cover image shown from House of Anansi Press edition)

Modern and Normal

It's National Poetry Month, so every Monday in April I will be reviewing/discussing a book of Canadian poetry.

Modern and Normal is perhaps the least sexy name for a book of poetry ever. Poetry, the form that gave us both the love-lorn sonnet and the scandalous limerick, is often associated with love and sex and romance and fancy language, which perhaps makes the idea of poetry being modern and normal sound like an oxymoron. Let me assure you right now that it is not. 

Solie's second collection of poetry - her third, Pigeon, won the Griffin Poetry Prize last year - is filled with the kind of language we use in our modern, day-to-day lives, but it is so beautifully arranged that to read it is to rediscover an entire side of your vocabulary. And Solie uses that language to expose the strangeness that is our modern world, and the bizarre intrigue of the banal.

Much of this collection focuses, in one way or another, on the tensions that reside around the edges of modern life - we like to go camping, but only if all the amenities are there and the wildlife is under control; we are interested in travelling, especially because of the duty free shops offered at the border.

But Solie is not bleak or heard-hearted about modern life. Her poems are filled with ironic twists and elegant observations about dating, roadside motels, and hunting in the bush. And for Solie, modern life is filled with poetry. Modern and Normal is littered with found poems - snatches of text and conversations plucked verbatim from their source and rendered into amusing and lovely snapshots of life. Of these found poems, my two favourites are taken from an old geometry text book and a list of publications of natural history. Truly, the poetics of everyday life are worth reflecting on, even if they are found in a math problem.

As a collection, Modern and Normal is wonderful. Whether you think you "get" poetry or not, Solie's writing is clear and pleasant, and her metaphors are unusual in a way that aids your understanding rather than complicating it. This is not to say that Solie is a simplistic poet - her verse is varied in style, tone, and language, which makes her poetry really enjoyable to read. Her work inviting, though, and Modern and Normal is a great way to kick off an indulgence in Canadian poetics.

Modern and Normal
by Karen Solie
First published in 2005 (cover image shown from Brick Books edition)

National Poetry Month 2011

Along with April Fool's Day, April 1 marks the beginning of National Poetry Month. This year, the theme is Nurture/Nourrir, and is about nurturing interest in Canadian poetry and the institutions and people that make it available. 

For NPM last year, I wrote about a different aspect of Canadian poetry every Friday in April. This year, I am taking it up a notch and will be reviewing a different collection of Canadian poetry each Monday in April. 

Happy National Poetry Month! It will get properly underway on Monday with a look at Griffin Prize winning poet Karen Solie's second collection of poetry, Modern and Normal; so, come back to celebrate Canadian poetry with me.

Trillium Award Winners Announced

Ian Brown, who is currently eating is way across Canada in the name of the Globe and Mail, is having quite a year. His remarkable sort-of memoir, The Boy in the Moon (Random House Canad) won the Trillium Award for the best English-language book by an Ontario author. Brown has also won the Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction and the B.C. Book Prize.

The Trillium Award for the best French-language book went to Ryad Assani-Razaki for his short-story collection Deux Cercles (VLB éditeur). It's his debut collection and deals with issues of alienation and immigration.

The Trillium awards for poetry went to Karen Solie (English-language) for her collection Pigeon (House of Anansi Press), which also won the Griffin Prize earlier this month, and to Michèle Matteau (French-language) for her collection Passerelles (Les Éditions l'Interligne). Matteau is a novelist and Passerelles is her first collection of poetry (with its success, we can only hope to see more of her poetry); her first novel À ta santé, la vie! won the Trillium Award in 2001.

Congrats to all the winners. The Trillium Award is worth $25,000, which is a pretty nice payday really.

Image shown a collection of the covers of the winning books.

The Poetics of Wimbledon

As poetic inspiration goes, sport may not seem like a much of a muse. Certainly, it isn't one of the traditional Greek ones, but sports and poetry have been coming together for quite some time. From Ernest Thayer's comical baseball classic, "Casey at the Bat" to A.E. Housman's moving "To an Athlete Dying Young" and the more recent, and racy, hockey poetry by Canadian Billeh Nickerson ("Why I love Wayne Gretzky - An Erotic Fantasy" is especially naughty while remaining PG), sporty poetry is an under-covered genre.

That may all change though, because for the first time ever, Wimbledon - the Grand Slam of grand slams - has appointed a poet laureate. Englishman Matt Harvey won the position and will be writing a poem a day for the entirety of the two-week tennis tournament, which began today. The poems are being published on the Wimbledon website under the heading Wimblewords and, if the first two are any indication, this will be a great fortnight for tennis fans and poetry lovers alike, even if some of the pieces get a little silly (a poem a day for two weeks is a tall order when you have millions of people watching you).

You can actually listen to Harvey perform his first poem, "The Grandest of Slams" (played over a lovely little montage of Wimbledon moments), which he wrote in the lead-up to the tournament.

Image shown Matt Harvey at Wimbledon (from wimbledon.org)

Griffin Winners Announced

The Griffin Poetry Prize winners were announced tonight at, what I hear, was a very swanky do in Toronto. As I mentioned before, the prize money went way up this year, which means the winners did better than ever and all the nominated poets came away with something (besides, of course, the honour of being short-listed).

Without further ado, the winners:

Karen Solie won the Canadian prize for her collection Pigeon (House of Anansi Press)

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin won the International prize for her collection The Sun-fish (The Gallery Press)

Congratulations to both winners and to all the nominated poets, who were:

For the International Prize:

Grain by John Glenday (Picador)

A Village Life by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Cold Spring in Winter by Valérie Rouzeau and translated by Susan Wicks (Arc Publications)

For the Canadian Prize:

The Certainty Dream by Kate Hall (Coach House Books)

Coal and Roses by P.K. Page (The Porcupine's Quill)

Image shown the cover of Karen Solie's Griffin Award-winning Pigeon.

Winding Down, Revving Up

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Well, today is the last day of of National Poetry Month and it's been a pretty good month, I think. And, even though the emphasized, focused look at poetry is winding down (not in all circles of course), it looks like this month has spawned some pretty good things to help keep poetry in the spotlight for a little longer.

First, the Poet Laureate of the Internet project. It was a democratic process, but in the end, the Internet couldn't decide and it was a tie: Canadian poet Sina Queyras and American poet Robert Lee Brewer. Both poets have blogs where they post not only poetry, but also about poetry and poetics and influences, etc. It makes for good reading and they both work to engage people in the greater discourse of poetry, as well as in the poems themselves. So congratulations to both Sina Queyras and Robert Lee Brewer; I'm interested to see how this year of Internet poetics will unfold.

The other post-April poetry movement I'm excited about is Influency Salon, an online poetry magazine. The magazine/website just launched its first issue, featuring reviews of poetry books, essays and poetry discussions. The site itself looks really sleek and the content is well crafted, with many of the contributors published poets themselves (Sina Queyras pops up here as both a reviewer and a reviewed).

So, National Poetry Month may be over after today, but poetry (and poets) don't seem to have any interest in giving up the attention they've been receiving this month. And neither should they. New and interesting things are happening in the world of poetry (Canadian and otherwise), and confining our attention to just one month would be a waste.

Slam

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Hold onto your hats: The Toronto Poetry Slam finals are tomorrow night. And if you're into slam, that's kind of a big deal. The finals decide who will make up this year's TPS team (four plus one alternate) and therefore, who will represent Toronto at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Slam is basically performance poetry. A TPS slam event usually features 12 poets, all of whom perform and are subsequently scored during the first round. The top six poets then progress to the second round, in which they perform something else. In the third round, the top three poets compete for the win. There are always prizes (ranging from gift certificates to X-Files DVDs), but they're sort of the icing on the poetry cake.

Slam is a little raucous - audience members are encouraged not to be quiet - and it is a competition, which some people take issue with. There is a contingent of more traditional poets who don't approve of slam's poetry-as-competition format; a position that has caused some heated debate (page vs. stage, if you will).

I guess I can see both sides of it, but to claim that poetry is never performance is just nonsense. Any time poetry is read aloud as a form of diversion or entertainment, it is being performed. And as for the competition aspect, well, I've certainly entered more than one poetry competition in my life and I never thought that made what I wrote less than poetry.

So, slam comes down to a matter of preference. It's a genre of poetry, which - if the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word is any proof - has been largely welcomed in Canada. I mean, we even had slam poet Shane Koyczan perform at the Olympics in Vancouver.

So, if you want page poetry, you can have it; if you want stage poetry, slam is growing in popularity all across the country; and, if you're like me and you want both, even that isn't a necessarily a contradiction in taste.

Image used: a live-painting (done on stage) entitled Canadian Festival of Spoken Word by Sharon Hodgson

Playing at Optimism and Succeeding

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Not very many people are asked how optimistic they are about they jobs. Usually, we take those kinds of things for granted. We like them or we don't (or it depends on the day), but optimism and pessimism aren't usually things we feel toward ourselves as teachers or lawyers or administrative assistants or whatever. Poets, though are different.

The Optimisms Project (hosted by books.torontoist.com) is asking young poets to be optimistic about poetry. And if they aren't optimistic, they're asked to fake it, just for one day. The project is being managed and run by Toronto poet Jacob McArthur Mooney, who says he isn't really optimistic either, but is willing to fake it for a whole month just to see how it goes.

Six days a week (every day but Sunday) for the whole month of April, The Optimisms Project presents the ramblings of a poet explaining why they're optimistic about poetry. It sounds like it might be silly, but it's actually really good. And every day you know you can go back and read about what makes people optimistic enough to do what they do (despite the general appearance of cynicism). To be honest, when reading some of the missives I actually wondered how many of these poets actually convinced themselves with their words - more than a few, I hope.

There are lots of things to be optimistic about as a reader of poetry in Canada. Is it harder to be optimistic when you're a poet? I guess that depends on what day of the week it is.

Canada's Poetic Landscape

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I'm writing something about Canadian Poetry.

Yes, I have written about how landscapes are treated in Canadian literature before, but when it comes to Canadian poetry things are a little different. Canada's many landscapes have been an integral part of our national poetry since pretty much the beginning of Canadian time.

Way back in 1867, when the Confederation Poets (such as Charles G. D. Roberts, Duncan Campbell Scott and Archibald Lampman) got going, the wrote some pretty landscape-heavy poems about the scenery or the wilds or the vastness of what surrounded and confronted them. I once argued that the Confederation Poets were Canada's Romantics (something I stand by) and that their turn to look out at the land instead of in at themselves affected how Canadian poetry has progressed.

Now, that's not to say that the inner landscape doesn't exist in Canadian poetry, because it most certainly does. But that is not what this post is about.

In both the April edition of The Walrus and the most recent edition of Geist, Canadian landscape(s) poetry and poets are nicely featured. First,The Walrus features a lovely little piece on Al Purdy, one of Canada's foremost poets who wrote extensively about the Canadian landscapes that interested him. Geist, on the other hand, is featuring a Jackpine sonnet contest. The form was invented by Milton Acorn (another celebrated Canadian poet) and basically gives permission to poets to write irregular sonnets (which sounds like it should be an oxymoron, but instead is probably exactly the way Canadian sonnets should be written).

It's easy to think of landscape poetry as old-fashioned or somehow cliche, but really, in a country as vast and varied as Canada, the landscapes are a huge part of how we identify. And landscape poetry isn't all flowery. Robert Service wrote some amazing poetry that was rooted in a particular landscape but about more than projected emotion ("The Cremation of Sam McGee" comes to mind). A lot of our history as a country is also rooted in the landscapes of Canada, from the mountains of the west coast, to the arctic, the prairies, the oceans and the forests that carry almost right the way across. Really, if our poets weren't writing about it, we'd be missing out.

Image shown painted by Leanne Shapton

Griffin Poetry Prize: The Shortlist

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the largest poetry prize in the world for an English-language (or English translation) first-edition poetry collection. Each year, two awards of $75,000 are give out: one to a living poet residing in Canada and one to an living international poet. The prize purse increased this year (the prize was formerly $50,000 for each winner) and for the first time ever, each finalist will also receive a cash prize of $10,000. The prize was launched in 2000 as a way of recognizing the importance of poetry and the role it plays in society.

This year's judges are Canadian poet Anne Carson, Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie and American poet Carl Phillips. The shortlists for the 2010 awards was announced today.

International Prize shortlist:

Grain by John Glenday (Picador)

A Village Life by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Sun-fish by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (The Gallery Press)

Cold Spring in Winter by Valérie Rouzeau and translated by Susan Wicks (Arc Publications)

Canadian Prize shortlist:

The Certainty Dream by Kate Hall (Coach House Books)

Coal and Roses by P.K. Page (The Porcupine's Quill)

Pigeon by Karen Solie (House of Anansi Press)

The Griffin Poetry Prize also publishes an annual anthology of works by the nominated poets. All the proceeds go to UNESCO's World Poetry Day, which is another way the Griffin Trust works to promote poetry.

The Prize will be awarded on June 3, so check back here to find out who wins.

It's National Poetry Month and the Shortlists are In

It's National Poetry Month, so every Friday in April I will write something about Canadian Poetry.

The shortlists for the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Memorial Awards were just announced, and as awards for Canadian poetry go, these are two biggies (more so because of what winning means and not because of the $1,000 you get for winning).

The Gerald Lampert Award goes to the best first book of poetry published in the given year. The shortlist:

The Certainty Dream by Kate Hall (Coach House Books)

Gun Dogs by James Langer (House of Anansi Press)

Soft Where by Marcus McCann (Chaudiere Books)

Poems for the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names by Soraya Mariam Peerbaye (Goose Lane Editions)

Inventory by Marguerite Pigeon (Anvil Press)

Something Burned Along the Southern Border by Robert Earl Stewart (Mansfield Press)

The Pat Lowther Award is given to a female poet for a collection of poetry published in the given year. The shortlist:

God of Missed Connections by Elizabeth Bachinsky (Nightwood Editions)

Permiso by Ronna Bloom (Pedlar Press)

Expressway by Sina Queyras (Coach House Books)

Paper Radio by Damian Rogers (ECW Press, a misFit book)

Lousy Exploriers by Laisha Rosnau (Nightwood Editions)

Pigeon by Karen Solie (House of Anansi Press)

Relatively speaking, there are very few big poetry prizes given out each year, which means that the ones that are awarded are steeped in importance. But it also means that not all great poetry collections have an opportunity to shine in the public light. Canada has a long and proud history of producing very good poets, and it's a shame more people don't know that.

Hooked

People's interior lives are quite fascinating. Some people are quite different in their private worlds than the persons they project might lead you to believe; conversely, there are some people for whom you wish this was the case, only to discover that they are as ugly inside as out. In Hooked, Carolyn Smart challenges your perception of inner and outer lives by placing you inside the heads of seven real women and giving you a taste of who they were and what made them so.

When I think of Smart's body of work, I always think about her confessional poems. She writes with an impressive honesty about situations and emotions that are hard to quantify in words. In each of the seven poems in Hooked, Smart takes on the persona of the woman she writes about and, demonstrating an incredible ability to distill research, gives each of them a wholly unique voice.

What brings me back to the book again and again is the sense that I am experiencing seven entirely different lives, none of which I actually desire to experience in real life. All of these women are consumed (or hooked, if you will) by a passion that eventually brings about the demise of their body or soul.

And as awful as it sounds, not all of these women are people you particularly want to save - even if they are fascinating. Take Myra Hindley (the UK's Karla Homolka) or Unity Mitford (an English devotee to Hitler and his cause), for example. The voices Smart evokes when she embodies these women is perhaps most striking because where you judge them, she does not. Rather, she lets them tell you about their motives and sadnesses, making you almost complicit in the horror of their lives.

But not all the women Smart chose to focus on are so awful. "Rickety Rackety," written about Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott's wife) is quite sad, although the language is beautiful in its cadence and the images it strikes in your mind: vivid at the centre and blurring slightly around the edges.

In our society there is a tendency to type-cast people - men and women alike - so they become known as one thing forever. In Hooked, Smart goes beyond the roles these women filled and explores their inner lives, in a way explaining how they became to be known as they were. Her poems, written in sections, piece together the times and places and people that frame the women she chose to write about, and the picture that forms is one of passion and compulsion. For all the things that these women may have done or not done, let there be no mistake about it: Each one of them lived, and lived a life worth reading about.

Hooked

by Carolyn Smart

Published in 2009 by Brick Books (cover image shown from that edition)

Alice's Adventures

Of all the many books I have read and reread, I think my copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass is by far the most careworn. I have been reading Lewis Carroll's classic stories since I was little, and every time I pick them up I get lost in the language and the fantastical world of Wonderland (and the Looking-Glass House) just as if it were the first time I was reading about them.

In Alice in Wonderland movies (including, by the looks of things, the new Tim Burton one), Carroll's two stories tend to be strangely combined. Admittedly, because my copy includes both stories, I have always read them together. But, even as a kid, I knew that the white rabbit's world was one of cards and the world of Tweedledum and Tweedledee was set on a chess board.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is just minding her own business outside, sort-of listening to her sister but really playing with her cat Dinah. Then, a white rabbit in a waistcoat runs by. So naturally, Alice follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Or rather, into a long corridor filled with doors she can't open. And then she discovers a table with a key on it. But the key only fits into a tiny door that Alice is much to big to fit through. Luckily, magically, a bottle appears with a label saying "Drink Me" tied to its neck. Alice obliges (after diligently checking to see if it had the marks of poison on it - don't let it be said that Carroll was without morals) and quickly shrinks. The shrinking (and subsequent growing) motif is a common one in Wonderland and in the beginning, brings Alice to tears (mostly of frustration, I think).

But eventually she makes her way through the little door and into Wonderland. Once there, she engages in a ridiculous caucus-race, explodes into a giant inside the white rabbit's house, meets the caterpillar who sits on the infamous mushroom, attends the Mad Hatter's tea party (although I must say I always thought the March Hare and the Doormouse were the most interesting of the guests), tries to talk with the constantly disappearing and reappearing Cheshire Cat, plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts (using a flamingo for a mallet and a hedgehog for a ball), listens to the story of the Mock Turtle in the company of a Gryphon, and goes to court for allegedly stealing the Queen of Hearts' tarts. It's an absolute whirlwind of adventure (and I left bits out!) and a very quick read.

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice is a bit older and instead of playing with Dinah at the beginning of the story, she is playing with Dinah's kittens. And she is indoors, in the drawing room, which is where she notices that in the mirror there is a Looking-Glass House, which is exactly like hers only backward. So Alice decides to explore the Looking-Glass House further and visiting it, whereupon she encounters a garden of rather rude talking flowers. The main premise of the Looking-Glass world is that it's all a giant chess board, and after Alice enters the board she's obliged to play the game. In doing so, she encounters Tweedledee and Tweedledum (who tell her the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter and all the poor little oysters), Humpty Dumpty, and the Red and White Queens (among others).

Usually I hate it when the main character wakes up at the end of the story (which Alice does in both books) because it throws all the action into a wishy-washy light and often seems to indicate a lack of follow-through on the author's part. But, here it works for me. Maybe it's because the worlds Alice visits are so strange that they really work as the kind of disjointed dreamworld that most readers have experienced at one time or another. And whether or not the stories are the result of Carroll's own opium-induced dreaming, Alice's perspective and language certainly ring true.

But beyond the dreamy quality of Alice, what I love most about the books are all the extra poems and songs and stories that Carroll includes. "The Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (both from Through the Looking Glass) are probably my favourites, but "You are Old Father William" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat" (from Wonderland) are also excellent. Carroll has such a knack for language and parody, which makes Alice a real treasure-trove for a reader, allowing you to pick up on different angles and suggestions each time you read it.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

by Lewis Carroll

First published in 1865 (Wonderland) and 1871 (Looking-Glass) (Cover image shown from 1968 Magnum Easy Eye edition)

Autobiography of Red

As nice as a straightforward novel can be, it’s always exciting when a writer takes a real risk with their work. Sometimes authors take a risk in with style or with subject, but rarely do they tackle them together. In Autobiography of Red, that’s just what Anne Carson does.

The title alone is different, but when I opened the book and discovered that Carson had written a novel in verse, I think I gasped a little in excitement. There are a lot of ways to tell a story and sometimes we get lazy about it, falling back on comfortable themes and images. Carson does not do that.

Autobiography of Red tells the story of Geryon, who is at once a young man and a red-winged monster. In Stesichoros (the Greek poet who wrote The Song of Geryon quite a long time ago)’s account, Geryon is the grandson of Medusa. His form is debated, but historians seem to agree that he was a monstrous warrior; he lived on the Mediterranean island Erytheia (the red island of the sunset), where he kept a herd of red cattle. Herakles, for his tenth labour, was required to go to Erytheia and obtain all of Geryon’s cattle. In the process of doing so, Heracles kills Geryon.

In Carson’s telling, Geryon and Heracles are much more complicated and also much harder to place. She starts her story (after a couple of appendices laying out Stesichoros’ mythology in a lovely way) with Geryon’s childhood. That was when he started his autobiography. Geryon starts collecting things secretly, forming his autobiography out of objects he finds and patterns he makes—but it’s a secret (except from his mum), because for Geryon, an autobiography is an interior thing, just for him.

When Geryon grows up a bit, he meets Herakles and falls in love. Where this story takes place, in both time and space, is a great mystery, but nonetheless the two leave Geryon’s world for the world of Herakles’. It’s around this time that Geryon takes up photography, adding the images to the ongoing project of constructing his autobiography.

The scenes between Geryon and Herakles are so precise they are almost vague—it’s as if the more detail Carson gives the less real the scenes appear, which makes for a very beautiful and disturbing story. Carson, taking full advantage of the emotional power and potential for suspense offered by verse, slowly unfolds their relationship, just as Geryon slowly and uncomfortably unfolds his wings for Herakles.

Of course, Herakles cannot stay a good guy forever, and he crushes Geryon when he leaves. Geryon, who has only ever been vulnerable to abuse and neglect, sets off to travel the world and eventually runs into Herakles again. But Herakles has moved on, and his new lover Ancash becomes an awkward reality for Geryon as the three men travel on together, setting out to reach the top of a volcano. Geryon’s attraction to fire (and really, all things red) is pronounced in the latter part of the book. He becomes mesmerized by flames and describes them seductively, making them leap at you in a terrifying way. In another writer’s hands, Geryon’s attraction to fire could be an all-to-easy metaphor for his destructive lust for Herakles, but here, it is much more rich than that, and fire means many other things, including home.

Geryon’s journey, from abused child to lover to heartbroken youth to travelling artist, is the kind of story arc a writer can do a lot with. In Carson’s hands, Geryon’s autobiography become much more than a myth retold. By refusing to give her readers any sense of where the story unfolds (she mentions American money and countries in South America, but you just know that these are places you could never travel to), Carson manages to heighten the mysterious qualities of Geryon’s life while simultaneously grounding it in real, throbbing emotion and striking imagery. Geryon is, after all, a photographer.

More than anything, though, Autobiography of Red is a romance. Not between Geryon and Herakles, though, but between Geryon and life. And reading Carson’s story draws you into that life and makes you think about your own. For her, as for Stesichoros, Geryon is not just a side character in the story of Herakles’ triumph. Rather, he is the centre of the story, dominating Herakles because Herakles had to find him. And although he may be soft-spoken and gentle in his description, Geryon is someone who will draw you back to him again and again.

Autobiography of Red
by Anne Carson
First published in 1998 by Random House (cover image shown from Vintage Contemporaries edition)