SPRING BOOKS
Sookfong Lee expands her repertoire with poetry by Charlie Smith
At thirty-nine, you wept and he didn’t even listen. – Jen Sookfong Lee
long text, the kind you have to tap twice to read. He didn’t respond. It was Christmas. During sex, he said he loved you. You pretended not to hear him, went home, and he didn’t call for six months.” The Shadow List is not a meandering, safe escape filled with alliterative, rhyming passages that leave the reader wondering what the poet is trying to convey. Rather, there’s an urgency to this text. It’s direct,
Jen Sookfong Lee’s new collection of poems, The Shadow List, reveals that she can also deliver evocative verse in addition to writing novels and hosting a podcast. Photo by Kyrani Kanavaros.
BOOKS
THE SHADOW LIST
By Jen Sookfong Lee. Wolsak & Wynn, 88pp, softcover
d WHAT HAPPENS when a critically acclaimed novelist and former CBC books commentator switches lanes and becomes a poet? In the case of Vancouver’s Jen Sookfong Lee, it’s a magnificent ride. The Shadow List is a compulsively readable collection of poems touching on everything from moth infestations to former lovers, and from text etiquette to a
common lie told by writers. It’s tempting to describe the poetry as highly personal, though it’s uncertain whether Sookfong Lee is adopting the role of a narrator or simply baring her soul. The title phrase comes up in a poem called “Wishes”, which opens this way: “There is a stray eyelash on your cheek. You pick it off, balance it on your finger, close your eyes, and blow. So. What do you wish for?” What comes next in this shadow list is a deep dive into the passions of the mind. So many other poems in the collection, including “Five Breakups With the Same Man”, reveal Sookfong Lee’s freewheeling style. Here, she writes: “You sent him a very
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detailed, and courageous. And it delivers rich, contemporary tales through vignettes in the narrator’s life. This shouldn’t come as a surprise from the author of such novels as The Conjoined, Dead Time and Shelter, and The Better Mother. Her brief, evocative descriptions pop up again in “Anatomy”, which is near the end of the book of poems. “At eight, you knew never to cry,” Sookfong Lee writes. “At fourteen, you wrote furious poems. At twenty, you turned to a wall in the emergency room and answered no questions. At thirty-nine, you wept and he didn’t even listen. You press down on your thigh. It was the birth of your son, wasn’t it, that made you this soft?” In The Shadow List, the storytelling always looms large. This makes it ideal for non-poetry readers during National Poetry Month in April. g Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Shadow List will be launched on Zoom at 7 p.m. on Friday (April 23).
D andurand’s BIG MONTH
A
pril is National Poetry Month, and this year’s theme is resilience. It’s a fitting choice in light of the recognition being accorded Joseph A. Dandurand. He’s an archaeologist, a member of the Kwantlen First Nation, and the author of The East Side of It All (Nightwood Editions). This collection of poems details some of his experiences as a Downtown Eastside drug user trying to reconnect with family and his Indigenous roots. He recently made the Canadian shortlist for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize, which will be announced on June 23. The two other Canadian finalists are Canisia Lubrin for The Dyzgraphxst (McClelland & Stewart) and Yusuf Saadi for Pluviophile (Nightwood Editions). In addition, Dandurand’s The East Side of It All is on the shortlist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, which is awarded each year as one of the B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes. They will be announced at a gala on September 18. Dandurand was the Vancouver Public Library’s Indigenous storyteller in residence in 2019. He has written 12 other poetry books and produced several plays.
He is also director of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre and artistic director of Vancouver Poetry House, which is putting on the 11th annual Verses Festival of Words from Thursday (April 22) to May 1. One of the highlights is Hullabaloo, billed as B.C.’s Youth Spoken Word Festival, from Thursday to Saturday (April 24) via Zoom. Hullabaloo includes a spoken-word jamboree along with a youth video poem screening, workshops, and a feature performance on the closing night. In addition, Dandurand will give a presentation at the Verses Festival of Words called Talk the Talk: What is your ritual? The other finalists for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize are New Westminster resident Junie Désil for eat salt | gaze at the ocean (Talonbooks), Vancouverite Valerie Mason-John for I Am Still Your Negro: An Homage to James Baldwin (University of Alberta Press), Macalester College professor Michael Prior for Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart), and former parliamentary poet laureate Fred Wah for Music at the Heart of Thinking: Improvisations 1-170 (Talonbooks).
APRIL 22 – 29 / 2021
by Charlie Smith
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
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