Here’s a glimpse of some recent reads which lend themselves more to sampling, in a handful of reading sessions, than gobbling in longer periods of time. Not the books which require a sink-into-your-seat focus, the ones which afford the opportunity to window-gaze between pages.

Recently I’ve been missing a habit that once launched my mornings: reading poems. Occasionally a volume of prose scratches that itch, too. Like Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s The Lover, the Lake (2013; translated by Susan Ouriou, 2021). “Love in the plural,” as the author describes it. A story that “shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure, exultation in body and heart.” Set in the “beautiful and enchanting” Abitibi region of Québec, there are also striking line drawings and sketches between each chapter. Even more pleasure.

You can listen to Lillian Allen’s dub poetry on Youtube, if you can’t find her books. Her first, a self-published chapbook that sold 8,000 copies, Rhythm an’ Hardtimes (1982) contains “Black Woman’s Blues” (“Misused Abused Confused”), “Lalumba” (“My feet move to the drums of Angela, Malcolm, Tubman, Turner, Fidel and the many others”), and “I Fight Back” (“They label me Immigrant, Law-breaker, Illegal Ah No, Not Mother, Not Worker, Not Fighter”). The spirit in these early works resonates throughout her later works too: Women Do This Every Day (Women’s Press, 1993) and Psychic Unrest (Insomniac Press 1999). The latter takes its title from the Gloria Anzaldùa quotation: “Living in a state of psychic unrest, in a Borderland, is what makes poets write and artists create….” The former opens with a terrific introduction which presents the contributions of key creatives in Black culture in Toronto and beyond, from the mid- to later-20th century, although the poems feel decidedly international, moving from Nicaragua to South Africa, from Regent Park to Haiti.

Liz Howard Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (2021) is titled for the “cosmic bruise” which is an anomalous region detected in the ‘heat map’ of the known universe. Her author’s notes also reference the Anishinaabe cosmological knowledge REDTalk “Stars and Sky Stories: Indigenous Cosmology and Western Astronomy in Toronto 2018. If you’re like me, already you’re starting to feel like you’re not smart enough for these poems, and maybe I’m not. But straight away I was impressed by THE HOLE IN THE SKY, presented in a block shape, with a space in the middle. Shape matters, as in “Settler—Anishinaabekwe—Noli Turbare”, which opens “Beauty is my irreparable eye / and today I became geometric.” Even though I don’t catch all the science, I recognize the legacy of trauma in poems like “Brain Mapping”: “A rape in every / generation of my line within the time of photography. A heritable / loom of methylated DNA.” And the importance of another kind of history and inheritance, as with the ending of “Physical Anthropology”: “I know you know / women too painted those novels / in the caves of Lascaux.”

Originally exhibited as a 114-foot-long banner in art galleries, representing the length of the Columbia River, Rita Wong and Fred Wah’s beholden: a poem as long as the river (2018) is available in book-form too. There are two scripts, one mechanical font and the other handwritten, which border the topographical-map styled image of the river; they cross the river, where there is a bridge or where the water shrinks to the width of an inked line, and they cross each other too. The names of the Indigenous communities for whom this is homeland appear, along with the names of other creatures who inhabit this territory. There are map symbols indicating the type of terrain and there are line drawings which occasionally flesh out another dimension. Hard questions emerge, like: “Hot springs once used by the Ktunaxa are now run by the Kukiy as the river’s people circumnavigate history’s rapids, is this what a portage across capitalism looks like?” There are things to learn: like the distinction between a lake and a reservoir, mythologies, and conflicts between aboriginal communities and the federal governments. Also important is the sense of slowing, the realization that allowing words to take the shape of a natural wonder is a reminder to change our relationship with it IRL as well. “How can we work with the river and its peoples through whatever skills and capacities we happen to carry?”

Another creative living on the west-coast of (the country currently called) Canada, is Ivan Coyote. I’ve been reading their books for a couple of decades; by the time I get to Rebent Sinner (2019), it feels like catching up with a friend. They’re still working out at the same gym, their dog has gotten older and *sniffles* has died, they’ve been touring up north and remembering what it’s like to be around so much flannel: I enjoy the undercurrent of sentimentality (there’s a lot of hugging, a fair bit of nostalgia) and the alternating tones of celebration and resignation. Sometimes these pieces are a few words, other times a few pages. Whether it’s an Instagram post or a joke, a lamentation or a letter: their tone reads as authentic and kind. Ambassador first, author second—Rebent Sinner is filled with pride parades and pat-downs, props trucks and pronouns: a comfortable catch-up for established fans, an easy introduction for getting acquainted.

I wouldn’t have thought that Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel, Whereabouts (2021), would linger; it’s short, its chapters are short (two or three pages, usually), and it seemed the sort of book I might settle with in an evening and complete by saying “just more one” until I finished and turned out the light. But the simple language (she translates her own words from the Italian, a process begun, in some ways, In Other Words) and the sense of intimacy she cultivates made it read more like poetry for me. It also took an unexpected turn as I read on, and I didn’t want to rush through that; not to say that anything really happens, because it’s the kind of story rooted in interiority, but it slowed me down. “There’s no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season. Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide.”

Several of the artworks in The Art of Reading: An Illustrated History of Books in Paint (2018) by Jamie Camplin and Maria Ranauro were familiar to me because I’ve seen them used as book covers over the years. (On classic novels and, I believe, on a few Viragos too.) Even though there are detailed and scholarly chapters on various subjects, surrounding the images, they didn’t capture my interest. The long paragraphs accompanying each image were fascinating though, however, and even after I had flipped to the end of the book, over the course of a few days, I revisited the chapters that I found most intriguing. The Renaissance paintings of Mary intrigued me (I’d not thought of her as a reader, not even of scripture! Hee hee) and I loved the chapter on “Book Love and the Home”; the introductory chapters that pulled from a variety of eras and styles, to make the point that there have always been books in paintings, are also curious. And, there’s a lovely brown satin ribbon to mark your place.

What have you been reading lately, that’s best appreciated in smaller servings?