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Visual Inspection
Composed over a period of profound illness, Visual Inspection is a searching reflection on poetry, power and our embodied lives. Shaped by matching elements of literary history, poetic practice, contemporary art, politics and ecology with Rader’s own experience of chronic illness and pain, Visual Inspection writes into and through what is accessible to our minds and bodies. Part memoir, part essay, part poetic investigation, the text guides us through kaleidoscopic meditations on disability, access, vision, redaction, pain, illness and death. Set primarily in the central Okanagan, Visual Inspection is a codex of references, artifacts and associations that, taken as whole, revisions access as process and art as experience.
- GenresPoetry
150 pages, Paperback
Published September 28, 2019
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2022
Matt has had some thoughts. This is an incomplete record.
Sunlight redacts stars. Omissions are as important as inclusions. The name of an affliction can relate to ineffability and experience. Blindness is an opportunity to see. We sit in a circle and close our eyes. One by one each says a name their name in any order or all at once. Then there is a break. A break can have many forms. Sometimes a break is evident and sometimes elusive or surprising. There is always a lot of white space. As much as you’ll ever need. White space is like that — swallowing even the redactions.
Now I have to reread Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. "But instead of dying, she got sick." In the last sentence sick means to vomit. In the life sentence sick has a lot of meanings. More than you’ll ever know, because no one experiences everything.
Sunlight redacts stars. Omissions are as important as inclusions. The name of an affliction can relate to ineffability and experience. Blindness is an opportunity to see. We sit in a circle and close our eyes. One by one each says a name their name in any order or all at once. Then there is a break. A break can have many forms. Sometimes a break is evident and sometimes elusive or surprising. There is always a lot of white space. As much as you’ll ever need. White space is like that — swallowing even the redactions.
Now I have to reread Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. "But instead of dying, she got sick." In the last sentence sick means to vomit. In the life sentence sick has a lot of meanings. More than you’ll ever know, because no one experiences everything.
April 26, 2019
“How can I listen to the pain of my body? How can I listen to the pain of others? How can I listen to whole systems of pain?”
Visual Inspection by Matt Rader is a book that takes on pain and the body through erasure, contemplation, connection and interaction with place, poetics, censorship, power, nature, Indigenous people, memories, philosophers, friends and fellow experiencers of pain. His question: how to make it possible for a visually impaired student to access small-press Canadian poetry books threads through the book, as does “the Blind Field Shuttle Walking Tour.”
This book takes the reader on a journey and asks her to leap. It is a respectful unpacking of the able-bodied notion of accessibility. By sharing his own experiences and history with undiagnosed pain, Rader offers up his vulnerability, not an easy thing to do in a publicly shared work.
He includes a thorough notes section and bibliography. I flipped back and forth from the notes and body of the work. I tried to drink tea, write notes and read at the same time, aware of my own body’s limitations.
In the book, Rader shows his struggle with ways of describing that aren’t limited to the visual and by doing so shows how to become open to ways of experiencing the body, our own and others. I have read the book just once and I have circled, dog-eared and scrawled notes on pages. I intend to go through the bibliography with care. The book is timely and meaningful to me. I believe it will be so to many.
The author kindly gave me a copy of this book, knowing my own interest and concerns with the body.
Visual Inspection by Matt Rader is a book that takes on pain and the body through erasure, contemplation, connection and interaction with place, poetics, censorship, power, nature, Indigenous people, memories, philosophers, friends and fellow experiencers of pain. His question: how to make it possible for a visually impaired student to access small-press Canadian poetry books threads through the book, as does “the Blind Field Shuttle Walking Tour.”
This book takes the reader on a journey and asks her to leap. It is a respectful unpacking of the able-bodied notion of accessibility. By sharing his own experiences and history with undiagnosed pain, Rader offers up his vulnerability, not an easy thing to do in a publicly shared work.
He includes a thorough notes section and bibliography. I flipped back and forth from the notes and body of the work. I tried to drink tea, write notes and read at the same time, aware of my own body’s limitations.
In the book, Rader shows his struggle with ways of describing that aren’t limited to the visual and by doing so shows how to become open to ways of experiencing the body, our own and others. I have read the book just once and I have circled, dog-eared and scrawled notes on pages. I intend to go through the bibliography with care. The book is timely and meaningful to me. I believe it will be so to many.
The author kindly gave me a copy of this book, knowing my own interest and concerns with the body.
August 16, 2019
When I read this book, I immediately declared it was a firm contender for my favourite book of the year. Here we are several months (and a lapsed Goodreads account) later and I stand by this.
Few books have ever made me consider the layers of accessibility, consumption, and interaction contained within a piece of literature in the manner that Rader has with "Visual Inspection". Equal parts beautiful poetry and reflections on accessbility and dis/ability, the full weight of this book is impossible to appreciate in a single reading.
In many ways, this book is as much a resource for writers, as much as it is a piece of literary beauty. While I highly recommend the book to anyone, I think artists (literary or otherwise) should add this to their "must-read" lists. After all, as creators, we should be striving to constantly push the direction of art in ways that help to engage as many individuals as we can.
Few books have ever made me consider the layers of accessibility, consumption, and interaction contained within a piece of literature in the manner that Rader has with "Visual Inspection". Equal parts beautiful poetry and reflections on accessbility and dis/ability, the full weight of this book is impossible to appreciate in a single reading.
In many ways, this book is as much a resource for writers, as much as it is a piece of literary beauty. While I highly recommend the book to anyone, I think artists (literary or otherwise) should add this to their "must-read" lists. After all, as creators, we should be striving to constantly push the direction of art in ways that help to engage as many individuals as we can.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews