Sunday Poem

KELVIBRIDGE, GLASGOW, 2 P.M. 

Look below: the sable-eddied Kelvin
flowing fast, despite the town’s depression;
never angry, only bloody-minded,
rolling on to reach the red horizon. 

Glaswegians put their trust in how it carries:
they toss into its care the things they use:
lolly sticks and condoms, knives and bottles,
babies’ toys, a jilted lover’s shoes. 

A force that churns has somewhere else to be,
especially when spattered with this light.
Someone got it started; it is free.
To go a little closer must be right. 

And sometimes there’s a child from an estate
pulled from games along the muddy edge,
and this is why the branches bend and wait
and why we always pause upon this bridge.

By Alexandra Oliver, from Let the Empire Down (Biblioasis, 2016)

(Photo by Greig Middlemiss)

Verbatim

"When I begin conjuring the material for a poem, I pretend I’m like a film camera, taking things in from different angles and perspectives. I’m a noticer; I like to turn things over and examine even the most superficially boring aspects of everyday life. Then, sometimes, something mystical and often outlandish enters the room and you get a poem, a real poem that works on different levels."

Alexandra Oliver explains why it takes a village to write a poem. 

Poet Portraits

Over the last couple of years, Norman Allan has been sketching some of the poets who have appeared in Toronto's Art Bar reading series. Below are examples of his work. You can check out the series here.

Aisha Sasha John

Alex Boyd

Alexandra Oliver

Susan Gillis

Karen Shenfeld

Ewan Whyte

Jan Conn

Rhea Tregebov

Steven Price

Picture Perfect

Calling it "an incredible feat of vision and voice," Michael Lista is impressed by Alexandra Oliver's debut, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway.

Oliver, who also holds a degree in film studies, writes poems that have dual purchase on the senses; she is equally gifted at picture-perfect scene making and image construction as she is at stitching those scenes together in an unforgettable aural fabric.

And more:

Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats.

Sample poem here.

Sunday Poem

MEETING THE TORMENTORS IN SAFEWAY 

They were all called Jennifer or Lynne
or Katherine; they all had bone-blonde hair,
that wet, flat cut with bangs. They pulled your chair
from underneath you, shoved their small fists in
your face. Too soon, you knew it would begin,
those minkish teeth like shrapnel in the air,
the Bacchic threats, the Herculean dare,
their soccer cleats against your porcine shin,
that laugh, which sounded like a hundred birds
escaping from the gunshot through the reeds—
and now you have to face it all again:
the joyful freckled faces lost for words
in supermarkets, as those red hands squeeze
your own. It's been so long! they say. Amen.

From Meeting The Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis, 2013) by Alexandra Oliver 

(Illustration by Jacqui Oakley.)

Verbatim

"I grew up with much older parents. My parents were very fun and they were very eccentric, but they were also very mannered. When I was growing up it was the way we got things done—in a mannered but not uptight way. So I think it’s just I feel more comfortable with the constraints, I feel like there’s more freedom. You have something to work within and you can be subversive within that context."

Alexandra Oliver explains her preference for formal poetry.

Verbatim

"I learned that making poems is not just about reading deeply and writing liberally and adventurously, but also about allowing oneself to become an obsessive noticer. Having come from a film background, I started thinking of myself as a roving camera. I’d fall across things, quite literally: a girl eating the pages of a book in the library, a bearded fellow taking his socks off in a waiting room, a dead opossum blocking the entryway to the corner 7-11, a man slapping a sobbing woman in the cab of a pickup. Everything was important and relevant."

Alexandra Oliver writes about the experience of working on her upcoming collection, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway.

"Twenty-five drunks on a train"

Alexandra Oliver's "The GO Train Arithmetic Song" has been nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize by The Raintown Review. Read the poem here.