The Missing Field (255)

by Jennifer Zilm

Shortlisted for the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

Jennifer Zilm's poetry collection, The Missing Field, concerns themes of translation, preservation and the engagement with the transitory documents of everyday life, whether a snapshot of a Vancouver bus, postcards from the Middle East, lecture notes on Euripides, a van Gogh museum catalogue or marginalia in a water-damaged collection of Rilke poems.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2018

About the author

Jennifer Zilm comes from a long line of charismatic hillbillies. She has done time in libraries, archives, bible colleges and social housing. Her most recent book, ReLit Award nominee First-Time Listener was published by Guernica Editions in fall 2022. Her second collection The Missing Field (Guernica Editions, 2018) was shortlisted for the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her first book Waiting Room (BookThug, 2016) was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Zilm is also the author of two chapbooks: The whole and broken yellows (Frog Hollow, 2013) and October Notebook (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Zilm has been a finalist for many contests, including The Malahat Review‘s Far Horizons Award and Arc Poetry Magazine's Poem of the Year. She has graduate degrees in Religious Studies, Archival Studies and Library and Information Studies from the University of British Columbia and was a doctoral fellow at McMaster University, where her (unfinished) dissertation focused on liturgical and poetic texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio and the Humber College School for Writers, Zilm’s writing has been published in numerous journals, including Prism International, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, Geist, Arc, Grain, CV2 and The Malahat Review. Learn more at www.jenniferzilm.com.

Reviews

[Scott Free · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it is not surprising that now in my fiftieth year, I have waded deep into the waters of nostalgia and grasped at fragments of previous years like many an old man before me. So when The Missing Field opens on a definition of Ephemera, I know that where Ms. Zilm will take me will be charged with my own feelings above and beyond probably what she intended. But is that not the great art of poetry that she has mastered so well? The art of speaking of something deeply personal to the author but having it resonate with the readers who see their own experiences colored through her lens? Indeed, on the first page of the first poem there is a line that breaks and lifts my heart (it can happen simultaneously with great art): "...as though she herself was a fragment of fabric, a spasm of ancient rubble..." and from there I am transported wherever the artist wants to take me. I go happily splashing about in her bath, I trek across sands and ancient streets, I long for the touch of a hairdresser, I feel the touch of lips beneath a statue, I commiserate with Job's daughters. So by the time I see myself intensely in lines like "Lately my life is letting go of paper" and "...am I archivist or archive..." I've been filled and emptied (it can happen simultaneously with great art) so many times that I am satisfied that I am part and parcel of the verses even if they are not about me or mine. And that affords me an immortality that I can live with; a hearkening back to when the world was intensely shiny and new: "hey you guys?...I don't want to go home yet!"

[Calliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems about different types of documentation and art.

Lots of interesting writing about ancient documents and about poverty in Vancouver

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

This poetry is divided into three sections. Some are a few pages long - so if you do not like that long of poems, this may not be for you. Each is like a story - a story/encounter in each. It actually is not a long book, under 100 pages. Some are inspired by other works. Not my top poetry book, but it could be for others.