Strike/Slip

by Don McKay

In this extraordinary collection from one of our most celebrated poets, Don McKay walks the strike-slip fault between poetry and landscape, sticks its strange nose into the cold silence of geologic time, meditates on marble, quartz and gneiss, and attends to the songs of ravens and thrushes and to the clamour of the industrialized bush. Behind these poems lies the urge to engage the tectonics of planetary dwelling with the rickety contraption of language, and to register the stress, sheer and strain — but also the astonishment — engendered by that necessary failure.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Nature

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2006

About the author

Don McKay is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.

McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. He taught creative writing and English for 27 years in universities including the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick.

In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006). He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada's leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991-96.

In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.[2]

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

your heart's tongue seized
mid-syllable, caught by the lava flow
you fled. Fixed,
you stiffen in the arms of wonder's dark
undomesticated sister. Can't you name her
and escape? You are the statue
that has lost the entrance into art,
wild and incompetent,
you have no house. Who are you?
You are the crystal that picks up
its many deaths.
You are the momentary mind of rock.

- Petrified, pg. 4

* * *

How the slash looks: not
ruin, abattoir, atrocity; not
harvest, regen, working
forest. How it looks. The way it
keeps on looking when we look away,
embarrassed. How it gawks,
with no nuance or subterfuge
or shadow. How it seems to see us now
as we see it. Not quick.
Not dead.

- Stumpage, pg. 22

* * *

Dusk climbs the trunks and
spreads along the branches, then
summons its birds in rough
asymmetrical gestalts, wings
wincing the air, shifting like fine
polyphony, they waver and yaw, they
ride the wind that drives them,
and leave the heart in its little lit room.

- Solo, pg. 52

* * *

feathers but no wings.
Time passes. The feathers
fade in the light, which regards them
softly and undoes
their delicate Velcro.

Look at me,
bones but no body.
Time passes. The bones
fall in love with the wind,
which teaches them to whistle.

Look, nails
but no fingers.
Time passes. The nails
erode in the rain
which is falling,
falling made visible,

made river.

Look at me.

- Look At Me, World, pg. 67

[Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Devonian" is an all-time favorite of mine, and so many others will stick with me for a long time.

McKay's geopoetic is well developed and precisely aimed. Very well done.

[Chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not my thing.

[Amy McNair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this but it was a tough read. The incorporation of nature, humanity and a call to action on climate change was amazing. I definitely recommend it!

[Jenny Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though you may ave “read” this book, you never finish reading it, layer by layer, always new, humorous and poignant, alive.

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strike/Slip by Don McKay, of Newfoundland, combines living creatures, geology and industry into lovely poems that somehow make the ugly beautiful and bring the natural world--whether pristine or deeply damaged--to life. I loved it, and can tell already that this is a book and a poet I will come back to many times. It won the 2007 Griffin Prize in Canada, and deservedly so, though truth be told I haven't yet read a Griffin winner I haven't loved.

Eventually water,
having been possessed by every verb--
been rush been drip been
geyser eddy fountain rapid drunk
evaporated frozen pissed
transpired--will fall
into itself and sit.

...Suppose Narcissus
were to find a nice brown pond
to gaze in: would the course of self-love
run so smooth with that exquisite face
rendered in bruin undertone,
shaken, and floated in the murk
between the deep sky and the ooze?
(from Pond)

As a lover of ponds and all the life that supports itself in the murk and the ooze, I can't tell you how much I loved those lines. It's true, ponds are humbling. Beautiful, but resolutely not majestic.

Lovers (and likers) of nature poetry will find much to love and reread in this collection.

[Susie Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Musical, gorgeous, deep.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A profound reflection on the relationship between language and nature.