Ivory towers & London pubs, an education

Carellin Brooks, a UBC lecturer and author of four books, has published her debut collection of poetry called Learned (BookHug $20). It’s set primarily in the 1990s when Brooks was at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship (one of the world’s richest and most prestigious scholarship programs), during which she learned as much from London’s BDSM pubs as she did in the ivory towers of academe. Her explorations span the body as much as the mind, and there’s vulnerability in these poems, like the verses about a photo shoot for a media interview before Brooks sets off to England:

“Black leather biker jacket shrugged over, /thick hide, weight of comfort. Protect me.” And boldness when Brooks asserts her political side wearing a bawdy T-shirt: “Mr. President I murmur

Please / Reconsider your stance / Don’t Ask Don’t Tell / His weary hand in mine.” After she earns her PhD in Modern Foreign Languages, Brooks returns to Vancouver: “Soaked stucco, builders’ rush /to erect the cheapest, Californiastyle, / razed temperate rainforest” and the city’s tainted drug overdose epidemic, that makes her wonder, “Can I save anyone , / least of all / myself? / Open question.”

9781771667876