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POETRY
SPRING BOOKS Sookfong Lee expands her repertoire with poetry
by Charlie Smith
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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 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.
Check out the book review podcast the book rev e p www.redfernbookreview.com
for the latest in book reviews, podcasts & streaming. This week: “A Bright Ray of Darkness” by Ethan Hawke “A Bright Ray Hawkean Haw & “The Topeka School” by Ben Lerner “T
– 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, 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
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).
by Charlie Smith
SPRING BOOKS Author found no dark side to Shuswap Bushman
by Steve Newton
You may have heard the story of the so-called Bushman of the Shuswap. And if you haven’t, Paul McKendrick has a new book for you. e rst-time author tells the bizarre tale in e Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap, which details the intriguing crimes and exploits of John Bjornstrom, who managed to evade police for two years while living in the wilderness around Shuswap Lake in B.C.’s southern interior. He survived by raiding summer cottages, pilfering them of food and clothing and whatever else he wanted to take back to the book’s titular hideout, which he’d built into a rocky outcrop above a remote beach.
McKendrick had the seed of the book planted in his mind when he became one of the few people to gain access to Bjornstrom’s handcra ed abode shortly a er a group of Shuswap Lake houseboat renters happened upon the lair in the summer of 2002, the year a er Bjornstrom’s capture.
“I was fairly unique in terms of seeing the cave,” McKendrick says on the line from his Canmore, Alberta, home, “because it was only a short period of time between the houseboaters nding it and
Author Paul McKendrick (above) got a peek inside fugitive John Bjornstrom’s hideout. when it was blown up [by the Ministry of Forests]. So there weren’t that many people that ventured inside. I didn’t get to see it when it was fully furnished—[the RCMP] had already cleared out quite a bit of stu
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– Paul McKendrick
when I went through it—but even when I went through it, it was pretty comfortable, with the kitchen built out of plywood, and the bedroom chamber being quite large, the custom-built furniture in there.”
Bjornstrom had out tted the rustic bachelor pad with an electrical system powered by a bank of car batteries. He claimed to have carved the living quarters out with a hammer and chisel.
“What drives someone to do that?” McKendrick asks. “ at was always in the back of my mind. A serious undertaking, not really consistent with wanting to steal from and live o other people. He wasn’t scared of hard work.”
Although McKendrick uses the surprising complexity of the Bushman’s plexity of the Bushman’s 900-square-foot cave home 900-square-foot cave home as a starting point, it isn’t as a starting point, it isn’t long before he’s layering on long before he’s layering on other engrossing aspects of other engrossing aspects of the man’s story. A signi the man’s story. A signi cant part of the book involves cant part of the book involves examination of Bjornstrom’s examination of Bjornstrom’s claim that claim that he was hired as a private investigator to uncover sinister details of the notorious 1990s Bre-X mining scandal—which, he maintained, resulted in death threats and being put on a hit list for knowing too much.
So how much of Bjornstrom’s Bre-X story does McKendrick think is true?
“ at’s certainly one of the lingering questions,” he says. “Other people who knew him well talked of him being an honest person, and I didn’t come across any falsehoods from him. It seemed like [the Bre-X investigation] was a one-o arrangement between him and [Bre-X CEO] David Walsh, so it’s not like other people in the company would know about him, necessarily. I can’t come up with an explanation of why he would make that up.”
As well as the startling Bre-X claims, e Bushman’s Lair studies Bjornstrom’s assertion that he had psychic abilities and that they led to him being recruited for a secret U.S. military program in 1982. He also said that he was rst drawn to the Shuswap by a desire to help children being used by pornographers there.
“For me, the most intriguing thing is when you put the whole story together,” McKendrick says. “It seems crazy enough to be true when you put it all together, because who’s gonna invent all that? at why I felt compelled to tell the story, because so many things in isolation just didn’t make sense. Like talk of Bre-X, and the child pornography and stu . ere hadn’t even been any talk of Stargate, the secret CIA project, at that time.”
Although he was never as notorious a fugitive as someone like El Chapo, Bjornstrom’s capture was similar to the Mexican drug lord’s in that it was brought on by a love of the limelight. e Bushman was only taken into custody a er RCMP o cers set up a sting where they masqueraded as documentary lmmakers interested in telling his story. One wonders telling his story. One wonders if he could have avoided arrest if he could have avoided arrest for a lot longer if he’d been for a lot longer if he’d been less hungry for attention. less hungry for attention. “He was certainly pretty “He was certainly pretty good at avoiding [the pogood at avoiding [the police],” McKendrick says. “I lice],” McKendrick says. “I don’t know if he was getting don’t know if he was getting bored or he just thought that bored or he just thought that he needed to tell his story to he needed to tell his story to try to get people on board try to get people on board with what he was doing and with what he was doing and accept him. I mean, there accept him. I mean, there was a fair bit of pressure on was a fair bit of pressure on the police, and they were the police, and they were pretty motivated to catch pretty motivated to catch him. So I’m not sure how him. So I’m not sure how long he could have lasted. long he could have lasted. Obviously, his weakness Obviously, his weakness that they exploited was that that they exploited was that he was keen to talk to the media.” he was keen to talk to the media.”
For his B & E crimes in the Shuswap, Bjornstrom was sentenced to 23 months house arrest and three years probation in 2004. Before his death in 2018 at the age of 58, his will to connect with others saw him campaigning to become mayor of Williams Lake. He didn’t come close to winning, but TV footage of his political exploits made him out to be a likable, harmless guy.
“ e more you get to know him, the more you think he’s an honest man who was trying to help other people,” McKendrick says. “It was my conversation with his lawyer that really cemented my interest in telling his story, because his lawyer did think so highly of him and really came to believe everything that he said. So that was kind of a pivotal moment for me in deciding to write the book. When I set out, I was half expecting him to turn out to have a dark side to him, but I never found that.” g
