Poetry in Place: Poetry and Environmental Hope in a Southern Ontario Bioregion

POETRY IN PLACE: Poetry and Environmental Hope in a Southern Ontario Bioregion by Deborah Bowen and Noah Van Brenk, eds. Guernica Editions, 2025. 378 pages. Paperback; $19.00. ISBN: 9781771839716. *In Poetry in Place, Deborah Bowen, emerita professor of English at Redeemer University, along with her assistant Noah Van Brenk, has gathered 125 poems by forty-three Canadian poets from the southeast corner of Ontario. The poems explore a bioregion between the Grand River on the west and Lake Ontario on the east, part of the so-called Golden Horseshoe that includes both fertile farmland and industrial cityscapes. In her beautifully written introduction, Bowen explains the purpose of her anthology as a listening to the land, a slowing down to acknowledge what is actually there around us in a particular place. Poetry can forge connection: in this case, between heart and home. The result of such connection is hope, and hope is essential to any effort of environmental repair. *The poems themselves are grouped under ten headings: "Land," "Water," "Trees," "Birds," "Wild Creatures," "Insects," "Flowers and Plants," "Farming and Gardening," "Food," and "Future Perfect Tense"--the latter category an umbrella for anxieties about climate change. Most of the poems are in free verse, though some employ the random rhyme of spoken-word poetry. And, of course, some are better than others. We learn in the section on flowers and plants that, etymologically, the word anthology refers to an arrangement of blossoms. But any bouquet will have its weeds. *First to the genuine blooms, however, of which there are many. From "Hibiscus," by Mia Anderson: "The barn-swallows / have breasts the colour of the borealis" (p. 189). These two lines are a liquid pleasure in our mouths. We notice the alliteration and consonance of barn and breasts and borealis, and we may not notice, but nevertheless feel, the vowels rise upon our palate. We also feel the swinging rhythm, the memory of meter, in the repeated two-stress segments--The barn-swallows / have breasts / the colour of / the borealis--a rhythm that matches the swinging turns of swallows in flight. And finally, of course, the surprise and explosion of metaphor. In borealis we get not only a color, but also a color that pulses across the sky. A bird we might hold in the palm of our hand suddenly fills the entire horizon, large as the universe itself. This, in miniature (but not in miniature at all!) is what good poetry can do. *By contrast, take these lines from Marilyn Gear Pilling's otherwise promising poem "Looking Out": "What happens when you spend time / on the edge / of such power, such beauty, such / possibility?" (p. 70). Notice the flatness of this passage, the lack of image or metaphor, the crowding in of abstractions. Do I, as a reader, feel power, or beauty, or possibility in these lines? I do not. *Fortunately, the barn-swallows by far outnumber the flightless abstractions in this rich array of poems. I suspect such a collection as this will inevitably be uneven. First, by limiting the contributors to those with a connection to a relatively small geographic area, and by further limiting the contributors to those with environmental awareness, the editors have narrowed the field. Suppose, for example, that in the early nineteenth century some enterprising anthologist had gathered a volume of poems about the Lake District. William Wordsworth would loom large, as would Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. But who else, really? *The second danger of such an anthology as this is its very environmental intent. Because environmentalists have a message. When Honey Novick ends her poem "Mushquoteh" by telling us that "Norway maple is a new metaphor / for decolonization" (p. 95), I want to say, save this for an academic essay. And when she writes, in "Oh, Mother Earth," that "Expediency lives in our hearts" (p. 50), I want to say, keep this for a sermon. I suggest that it is not the job of poems to preach or to pontificate, but to cast a magic spell. *Such a spell is beautifully cast by John Terpstra in "Giants": *"They'd sit *their giant hinds in a row along the top edge *of the escarpment, and pick at the loose rock *with their hands or their feet, then throw or skip *the smoothest stones across the bay, to see who could *land one *on the sandstrip, three miles away ..." (p. 57) *There is true imagination at work in the creation of such giants sitting atop the Niagara Escarpment, standing in for the land itself. *Also notable are the many richly sensuous poems about keeping and tilling the land. Take this elderly gardener in Adam Dickinson's "Beetroot": *"Her fingers are asparagus stalks, *stubbed and coiled cucumbers, *thick from years of having carried the charge *of her burly, grandmotherly care, *the pots of turnip *that need lugging to the kitchen." (p. 179) *One of the unique features of this anthology is a series of interviews with each of the contributing poets. Each writer is asked to describe their relationship to the land, their spiritual grounding, and their motivation in writing poetry. And many are eloquent in their responses. Twelve of the poets are thoughtfully Christian, and thirteen more admit to the influence (for better or worse) of a Christian upbringing. There is also a rich ethnic diversity, with sixteen of non-European descent, six of these appropriately First Nations. And there are even some scientists in the mix! Bowen and Van Brenk have assembled a worthy crew to give witness to a worthy place--as worthy a place as any that lies unobserved on our very doorsteps. Perhaps poetry can indeed offer hope for environmental repair. Readers of PSCF will find this anthology a delightful supplement to the usual academic discussions on creation care. *Reviewed by Paul Willis, emeritus professor of English, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA 93108.

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