Inheritance

by Kerry-Lee Powell

"Powell's poems are full of lively vignettes in which realism strikes lyrical sparks off harshness ."—The Times Literary Supplement

"Her work draws in the reader with anecdotal verve of good short stories and transfixes with exacting imagery"— The Harvard Review

"This remarkable debut collection isn't light reading: the dark pulse driving it is family history as trauma and the devastating legal of war. But its tight rhythms, startling images and vivid, arresting turns of phrase make it utterly compelling"—The Toronto Star


The Lifeboat

All night in his lifeboat my father sang
to keep the voices of the other men
who cried in the wreckage from reaching him,

he sang what he knew of the requiem,
of the hit parade and the bits of hymns,
he sang until he would never sing again,

scalding his raw throat with sea-water
until his ribs heaved, until the salt
wept from his eyes on dry land,

flecked at his lips in his squalling rages,
streaked the sheets in his night sweats
as night after night the reassembled ship

scattered its parts on the shore of his bed,
and the lifeboat eased him out again
to drown each night among singing men.

Inspired by a shipwreck endured by her father during the Second World War, and by his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventual suicide, Inheritance is a powerful poetic debut by the winner of the 2013 Boston Review Fiction Contest and The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Kerry-Lee Powell was born in Montreal and has lived in Antigua, Australia and the United Kingdom, where she studied Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cardiff University. Her work has appeared in The Spectator (UK), The Boston Review, Ambit, and the Virago Press Writing Women series. In 2013 she won The Boston Review fiction contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons award for short fiction and the Alfred G. Bailey manuscript prize. Her debut poetry collection, Inheritance, was published by Biblioasis Press in 2014 and was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was awarded a Pushcart Prize special mention for fiction in 2015. A novel and book of short fiction are forthcoming from HarperCollins. Kerry-Lee is represented by Chris Bucci at Anne McDermid and Associates in Canada and by Jennifer Hewson at Rogers, Coleridge and White in the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Karissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powell hit me like a load of bricks and didn't stop after the first piece. Stunningly written, captivating, intricate and blissful to read through, Inheritance had an impact in ways poetry never managed previous - everything screamed to me, yelled and yanked me in without ever seeming pushy or composed in the hopes of approval. The reality of how resonant and resourceful her collection is still stays in my memory.

[THE TORONTO QUARTERLY]

Hi, Everyone! Please check out my interview with Kerry-Lee Powell as we discuss her debut collection of poetry, Inheritance (Biblioasis, 2014). Read the interview and 3 poem excerpt on my TTQ blog now. http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.c...

[Tôpher Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just re-read this book after several months and was entranced by it all over again. So I wondered what the Amazon reviewers would make of it and when I get here, there aren't any reviews!!! To say I am astonished is to put it mildly. This is undoubtedly the best first collection of poems I have read in the last ten years. It interweaves her father's experiences of being shipwrecked and adrift in a lifeboat in the Second World War and it's traumatic effects on him with her experiences being raised by him and her life after he committed suicide. She covers the losses this caused, time, love, and a mind unable to communicate, with subaquatic imagery and a deep cold wit that is often searing in its honesty. The classical music he plays to try and create a bond becomes more of a torment. Her childhood leads unsurprisingly to a wayward young adult existence. Is it facile to say the poems are always about something real. There is no easy use of enigma to avoid the difficult or uncomfortable. Reading them is as irresistible as a scab waiting to be picked. There are poems in this collection that are so good that you daren't breathe for fear of spoiling the effect they have on you. If you love poetry this is not a book you should read, it's a book you have to read.

[Zoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powell's poetry reminds me of some of Atwood's poetry (you fit into me/like a hook into an eye/a fish hook/an open eye). Same kind of tight, crisp writing, and it really packs a punch.

Some of my favourites include Big Spender, To My Creditors, The Other Grandmother, Song for a Sleeping Father, Family Jewel, and The Lifeboat. But my favourite of all is Ship's Biscuit. How can someone say so much in so few words?

After mother scarpered
it was ship's biscuit
with shrapnel sparkles.

It was hot spurts and gristle
and cold snaps with a wet towel
for stealing a puff from dad's fag

or sneaking a peek at his titty mags.
But we buggers deserved no better.
It was us that made her run off,

with our bickers and our bungles.
It was our bloody cheek.
It was his bleeding knuckles.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your winter coat, frayed at the wrists.
A cassette of your voice reciting verse.
A fear of King Lear. A belief in ghosts.

- Inheritance, pg. 11

* * *

Caught in the lamp's amber,
the man whose wrung hands
hang limp at his sides,
having scourged the air and more,
and the hurt elsewhere,
a child asleep upstairs.
Above the rooftops, massed
clouds darken like bruises.

- Respite, pg. 22

* * *

King of the backwoods
photo-op. Carved
into chops. Zip-locked.
A stack of red chunks
hauled in a pickup
to a hick's chest freezer.

Snapped on crags. Bagged
in gouache, Victorian oils,
mounted on plaques.
An ingress of bone unfurled
above a burled walnut
executive desk.

Heart's snagged wound.
Horned god of the room.

- Two Views of a Stag, pg. 37

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You were told the air after bedtime was off-limits/ but you fled into that forbidden emptiness,/ the skyline a snare of flashlights, chasing in.”

With each line, she has a way of saying two things, one superficial and one deep.

[Lee Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One my favourite reads of 2014. It’s a moving, visceral collection, one that’s both accessible and profound, and asks for repeat readings (as any good collection should). I was impressed by how the trauma (a father’s suicide) shapes everything in the book, even the seemingly lighter pieces. You have an event that’s like a bomb going off and its shockwave reverberates for a lifetime.

For more, see my blog: https://leedthompson.wordpress.com/20...