ALONE ON A BOREAL STAGE: 2010 was a Gray Jay

Friday, December 31, 2010

2010 was a Gray Jay

eyeing my hand.
It took

what was offered,
robbed me whenever

I turned my back,
glued what it stole

to branches above
the probable snow line.

4 comments:

carin makuz said...: Love it.; 31/12/10 12:48 PM
Brenda Schmidt said...: Thanks Carin! All the best to you in the New Year!; 31/12/10 12:52 PM
Shawna Lemay said...: wonderful! amazing photo too.....!!!; 1/1/11 11:38 AM
Brenda Schmidt said...: Thanks Shawna! I used H's camera for this one. The jay looked amused enough with my struggles and hung around. I love gray jays.; 1/1/11 5:30 PM

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"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.