‘Moving with purpose’

The Middle
by Stephen Collis

Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2024
$18.95 / 9781772016420

Reviewed by Steven Ross Smith

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Stephen Collis, in The Middle, sings and speaks, immersed in ‘nature’ and amidst his own sensations of observation, speculation, wonderment, and grieving.

As his title suggests, and he describes—in his prosy, poetic preface—he’s there, musing, in an ever-shifting milieu, in “this fraught stretch of life between certain pasts … and uncertain futures….” Collis is a walker, a watcher, a muser, a recorder. His rendering is this trilogy of long poems.

In the first section—Sketch of a Poem I Not Have Written: A Blazing Space—Vancouver-based Collis (A History of the Theories of Rain) begins in fire, the world ablaze, yet flooding, most certainly changing. Breathe a bit in, here, from “First Movement”:

let us restore
chance to this
climate of determinacy
throw singed notes into
the wilderness the
                                   future is
change I will say

This is as close to a summary as I can quote—its hint of fire, change, poet’s own ‘stance.’ This Sketch is, at least, twofold—the fires that seem to be everywhere in our new climate reality, and a nod to one of Collis’ acknowledged writerly mentors, Robin Blaser (notably, The Holy Forest). Perhaps there is the beauteous blaze here too, and that of reverence. Collis’ weavings continue, drawn from his readings, references, sources, and samplings. Citations and influences are many, and include Dante, John Vaillant, Phyllis Webb, Ronald Johnson, Hannah Arendt, and even The Talking Heads, to name just a few. 

In this first part, the reader ‘listens’ through five extended movements, each contributing to a larger ‘orchestral’ piece.

The flow comprises elegant, careful, sparse, yet complex verse, often with terse lines, that probe realities, actual and envisioned. We travel with Collis, in the resilient, timeless, migrating natural world, and simultaneously in our current societal reality. For example, in “Fifth Movement”:

hand in hand 
on this green earth
[…]
and carry us
starward
or stagger as
guardians 
[…]
and the mysterious fact
that language can
even exist at all
or anything can be named
tree mountain river
or universal healthcare

Our attention is directed to leaf and ash, water and wing, mycelia, moss, boughs, ships, stars, animals, rockets, and comets; and we’re reminded to be aware:

The country of poets
is being bombed again

see the clouds of word-dust
billowing into televised air

Then near the end of this suite:

bewildered wildernesses
[…]
the practice of the forest
returns to practice us

We are simultaneously apart from and a part of all.

The second section, suitably titled The Middle, consists of 33 cantos. These are songs of migration, of movement, of searching and seeing. It seems to me that the migrant, in turns and at once, is the poet, the refugee, the seeker, the adventurer, the wanderer, the nature dweller. Words are careful, notions gently blended. Lines are terse, precise; stanzas cohere. The ‘voice’ is, at once, singular and multiple—a deft blend. The countryside is serene, gorgeous, and, at times, dispiriting. 

Who is speaking, in “Canto 13”?

I was mad
I believed I had free eyes
and land
to long for

Is it the voice of the writer? The journeyer? The disillusioned refugee?

Then timeless turbulence quickly follows in “Canto 14”:

Journeying from
[hide the name]
i do not know
from out the ocean
from some valley
like cattle
leaving so that
a thousand years 
fill with trouble
from mountain to the sun […]

Yet Collis proposes, despite all, hope for the earth, as in “Canto 16”: “bad governments / Gaia already / growing brighter.” And in Canto 24, the speaker senses, perhaps serenity: “the breeze of May / bringing fragrances / and felt soft feathers”

The final movement of the trilogy—Gardens in Motion—opens with a quote from the Danish writer Inger Christensen, which astonishingly notes that the Italian word for paradise—paradiso—bears the anagram diaspora. This offers a key to my reading of the whole book, interpretations as above. 

The poet/explorer walks in nature, as nature; its flora and fauna walk their own slow migration on the earth. Joining Collis here, on a pilgrimage in Wales, the reader experiences, as noted in the preface, “the climatological movements of various arboreal species; linguistics on top of paleobotany, climate change and the wanderings of people and trees, both in step with their warming and cooling worlds, whispering to one another.”

The poet speaks, his voice his own, with no need for the earlier ventriloquisms. We follow his observations, his understanding, his conclusions, all gathered in endeavouring to comprehend the life he is immersed in. His lines are longer, somewhat more prosaic; the structure is more open than in the earlier sections. His renderings are astute.

plants are just slow animals
moving with purpose
sensing varying conditions
and generally knowing
where their bodies are in space
so we are more plantlike than
we would like to think

While some migration in nature is a ‘natural’ response to conditions, we are at a tipping point of human ‘interference,’ and while Collis walks in a relatively remote and dense natural environment, he cannot avoid reflecting on that disturbance: 

even small seeds in the mud between toes 
can be explorers of entirely new domains 
bark-boring beetles
have arrived in the wood of transport palettes
taking the vectors of capital into their
invasion biology opportunism

Even as language clings on, it transforms. In “Proto-Indo-European Trees” Collis writes:

Morphemes as clear-cut as trees
the parts of a chariot or
a tree are related anatomically

laks – lox – salmon – one of the oldest words
still held in our mouths
tasting sea and river in their bodies

feeding the roots of trees
we continually try to name
you apple maple elm and nut

This book is a dense, rich reflection on the natural world and the human impact. Collis considers poets and their writings, as woven in—his term—a “poetic commons,” the current and historic ecology that poets and language’s evolution share. There is sorrow, there is hope. As Collis practices, he also calls for awareness, presence. Perhaps my reading is selective, but I see this book as fitting in with many current poets’ concerns as expressed in their writings—Lilburn, Rhenisch, and I hear of others, carrying forward while bearing, thinking, and speaking with, those of a century and a half (or more) ago; Gerard Manley Hopkins comes to mind, for example “Binsey Poplars” from 1879, “Where we, even where we mean / To mend her we end her, / When we hew or delve: / After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.”

Amidst the ‘transformations’—nature and human—an erroneous division because we are one and the same—Stephen Collis sees the interweaving, seeks understanding, and expresses awe and awareness, yet ends his collection with a plea, a mournful choral lament, a sung chant:

Do we not see we have opened the door we were not to open?
Do we not see the seed of love in the apple and the oar?
Do we not see the trees alive lying on the earth
their shadows standing tall / trembling with fire and language?

Steven Ross Smith enjoys muddling around with words, ideas, and books in flora-rich Victoria, BC. His decades-long migratory adventure from East to West through Canada’s many natural and made landscapes has implanted a continuing amazement and presented many poetic influences. His work often juxtaposes disparate threads, rendered in a variety of exploratory forms, as in his seven-book poetic series fluttertongue. His fourteenth book is Glimmer: Short Fictions, from Radiant Press. And in 2024 The Green Rose, a chapbook collaboration with Phil Hall appeared, from Ottawa’s above/ground press. Smith was Banff Poet Laureate, 2018-21. [Editor’s note: Smith recently reviewed Harold Rhenisch, Kevin Spenst, Eimear Laffan, and Tim Lilburn for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster