Rove

by Laurie D. Graham

With searing imagery and a startling sense of the particular, in Rove, Graham explores the core truths behind the "emptying out" of the family farm. She calls up, too, prairie suburban place, through an investigation of its plants, animals, and most trodden routes--those things that continue to differentiate one suburban place from the next--as suburban spaces continue to proliferate and falter. Using a variety of poetic styles: lyricizing the vernacular, assembling narrative out of lyric, Graham writes of her maternal Ukrainian prairie roots. Inspired by Andrew Suknaski's poetry, Laurie D Graham has created a new poetic landscape of her own, in this exciting and expansive first book of poetry.

Genres: Poetry

87 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2013

About the author

Laurie D. Graham comes from Treaty 6 territory (Sherwood Park, Alberta) and currently lives in Nogojiwanong, in the treaty and traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg (Peterborough, Ontario), where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine. Her first book, Rove, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada, and her second book, Settler Education, was nominated for the Trillium Award for Poetry. A third book is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2022.

Reviews

[Debbie Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a book to read more than once. In fact, the rich language and metaphorical images demand you to read it over and over again. Expect to discover some amazing lines: "Their house was a joust between onion and garlic" and "Questions like shots of vodka". As the title Rove suggests, this is a long poem that wanders not because it is poorly written but because it clearly grasps the emotions of loss and grief of not only family members but also the land that cradles them. Setting plays a major role in this journey as Graham writes "see this soil swallowed in thin, hard/gulps in all the cities I've lived". The use of these repetitive words “see” and “say” adds to the roaming nature and rhythm of the narrative as it unfolds past images and thought: “how place invades the body”. There is also a parallel loss of land to the Albertan oil fields with the reflective and confusing loss of family to illness. What begins with a rambling list of words ends with a gripping image that won’t let me go.

[Cathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful poem about place and family.

[Steven Buechler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was not a easy read for me but it was a worthwhile one. I had started it, put it down for a while, then finished reading it and re-read segments out loud to fully comprehend their imagery better. Once that process was done, I found my thoughts going back my own reflections of my life. Hence, doing what a great piece of literature is suppose to do.

http://tinyurl.com/n89aoyf