Insomnia Bird: Edmonton Poems

by Kelly Shepherd

The poems in Kelly Shepherd's Insomniac Bird are a cartography and a geography of Edmonton. The poems which shift between short, individual lyric pieces and found text emulate a black-billed magpie's nest with the subject-matter and also physically, with the words and lines. The poems generate the theme of home (the bird's nest, the city), and not feeling at home; sleeping, and the inability to sleep. The magpie (the insomnia bird) is the protagonist and the muse, the thread that connects everything to everything else in this work.

As such, Shepherd's poems move across the surface at speed, like Edmonton's NAIT train, and dive like magpies after the occasional tasty image or crumb of detail. The city as it spreads out across the Prairies, can do nothing to prevent urban sprawl, and grows taller with each new highrise building and office tower and sinks deeper into the ground, which is memory!

The city with purple fingers and black feathers
is bending branches outside the window.
In the photosensitivity of morning,
The city is an open window that can't hear itself think.



While Shepherd's poems are at times critical of Edmonton's automobile culture and urban sprawl, his tone remains ironic rather than moralizing and he is consistent in his use of dark humour to avoid being didactic. With such guidance the poems effectively disclose what is not seen, what is repressed, what lies behind the scenes in the city he shares with magpies.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2018

About the author

Kelly Shepherd has worked as a kindergarten teacher in South Korea, and a construction worker in northern Alberta. His first full-length poetry collection, Shift, was published by Thistledown Press in 2016 and longlisted for the Edmonton Public Library’s People’s Choice Award in 2017. He has written six poetry chapbooks, most recently A Hidden Bench (the Alfred Gustav Press, 2017). Kelly has a Creative Writing MFA from UBC Okanagan, and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Alberta, with a thesis on sacred geography. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, Kelly lives in Edmonton where he teaches at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. He is also the poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter.

Reviews

[Debbie Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it! You do not need to be an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada resident to appreciate these thought-provoking poems.

The book... is mind-warping, playful, and clever: an a(musing)-gathering-of-facts-and-twigs-and-words, (by a trickster bird) architecturally structured and constructed and carefully woven into a literary nest inspired by Edmonton’s urban growth...

Layered with wit and dust and city noise, a cacophony of provocative sounds and images, some illuminated like LED billboards, some more subdued like sandblasted cement, this collection of 53 found and lyrical poems kept this country night owl awake: thinking and staring outside an imaginary bus window and into the hum of the glaring street lights.

Catch my full review on my blog: Kites Without Strings!

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you live in Edmonton, or know Edmonton at all and like poetry, you need to read this. It's a brilliant collection of found snippets, bits of conversation, poetry and description. As you read the story, you follow the mischieveous Magpie around the city. There are Edmonton references throughout the book, as well as snippets of lines from other writers. I thought this book was creative and brilliant, and I really loved it.

I hope lots of people read this!

[Brandon Gould · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection with some fun poems.