From Shore to Shoormal
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| http://www.brokenjaw.com/catalog/pg135.htm |
From Shore to Shoormal ~ D’un rivage à l’autre
Poems by Donna Allard & Nat Hall
Broken Jaw Press
Two prolific poets/poètes
share a fascination for language; an attention to minute detail lyrically
explored to become worlds of their own; a geographical and spiritual connection
to the Atlantic Ocean and its offshoot waterways…Donna Allard and Nat Hall
combine their works, inspired and penned from their Shediac Bay (New Brunswick)
and Shetland Island (Scotland’s northern archipelago) homes, to create a
collaboration: From Shore to Shoormal (D’un rivage à l’autre).
Each poet embraces her own expressive style and observations,
and yet their mutual bond is genuinely apparent throughout the entire tome. It
is as if you can picture Allard and Hall standing each on her own shore or
shoormal communicating to the other with timeless messages dug up from
somewhere deep inside. Appropriately Hall writes in “Atlantic Home”:
Oh, wow, I found a bottle in the sea.
Water-washed words,
it spoke of shores,
my horizon can imagine…
From Shore to Shoormal transcends expected
descriptions of natural landscapes to yield a cornucopia of themes: navigation
and battles, heartache, memories and love, pollution and extreme weather, history,
culture and livelihood. For instance, a whole story is told in Allard’s “Northwest
Passage”. An excerpt reads:
eerie
like a Steven King novel, all roads leading to the wharf,
clogged with fog, dreamlike…
footsteps
cigarette lit, deep sigh, a distant horn heard…
ball cap removed, reshaped
The fact the poems are presented in both English and French
is a real treat; some are even written in the Shetland dialect, and others
incorporate expressions of Hall’s home. Even without being fully versed in each
language, it is intriguing to explore the changes in rhythm and sound, even
slight meanings, when comparing the translations. It is equally satisfying to
read each version aloud feeling your tongue move in novel ways to produce
melodious or elegiac tones.
Hall writes that words hide in stones. Both poets
have successfully quarried verse and visions for many a reader—perhaps while
sitting on their own shoreline—to enjoy and ponder. ~ Michelle Brunet
