Showing posts with label Sue Sinclair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sue Sinclair. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 December 2013

Tiny Gold Fawns


Sue Sinclair captures quite nicely her experience of reading Sara Peters' debut 1996.
I admire Peters’ skill in juxtaposing sweetness and innocence with abandonment and cruelty. Such stark contrasts could easily have been heavy-handed or melodramatic, but Peters has an eye for the particular, which allows her to create images of distinctively creepy beauty. There’s the green net bag of oranges in the poem in which two sisters act out being raped; there’s the wind blowing fresh and sweet as an apple while a child vivisects a gopher. And I can’t get out of my head the image of tiny gold fawns that jerk and shudder as they dangle from the ears of the mother-abuser in a poem that addresses the real-life murder of a four-year-old. The earrings are partly a display of power in miniature, tiny hunting trophies. But as an element of the mother’s dress, they also reflect her: I find myself wondering about how vulnerable she has felt, and about the strange bond that can exist between abuser and abused. The beauty of the image is disturbing in its evocation of the child’s helplessness and suffering. Every time I think of the gold fawns, the beauty of the image gives me a certain uplift, one that I reject in the same moment. But the spark of pleasure I feel is inextinguishable—I feel it every time—and it makes me complicit in the crime even as I’m overwhelmed by compassion. Such is often my feeling as I read these poems. I’m no fan of delving into disturbing experiences for a thrill, but Peters is instead (or also?) asking readers to confront the complex intertwining of innocence and cruelty, compassion and complicity in each of us.

Sunday, 21 April 2013

Thursday, 18 April 2013

Hooking


Mary Dalton's collection of centos, Hookingarrived in the office yesterday. She launches her book tonight in Montreal at Argo (with special guest Sue Sinclair).  She reads in Ottawa on April 23 and Toronto on April 24. In an interview with John Barton, she explains the notion of authorship underlying the book:
I think of the lines I’ve excised from poems as material, as strips of words. Each line, the hooking of these words into this particular sequence on a line, is the creation of its individual author; the sum of the lines in each cento, the way in which these syntactical fragments have been hooked together, is my creation. These pieces are at once mine and not mine. They give rise to the question, where does originality lie?

Sunday, 31 March 2013

A Better Way Of Telling The Truth


Sue Sinclair, CWILA's first resident critic, hopes to refocus the discussion of criticism:
I see the critic as someone who serves both past readers of the work and its possible future readers, as well as the writer. In a sense the critic also serves the artwork in that she takes up its invitation, engages with it. But it’s the writer I’d like to focus on for a moment. Some people think that the critic is not there to serve the writer in any capacity. But given that the writer, if he reads a review of his work, will likely be more affected by it than anyone else, I think it behooves the reviewer to consider the effect she may have on him. Some think that the writer is best served in just the way that the reader is: by the critic’s truthful response. I agree. But there are different ways of telling the truth: it can be done indifferently, it can be done as a slap in the face, or it can be done kindly and with a—perhaps implicit—acknowledgement of the effort that every writer brings to their work. My experience is that the first two approaches can hamper or harm the writer and that the last one can help the writer to rise to the difficult occasion of public criticism. Not everyone thinks that truthfulness and kindness can coexist. Creating the space in which they can coexist is difficult, but I’ve seen it done. And I’m up for the challenge. It’s worth taking on.