‘Tight, efficient poetic mechanisms’
Empties
by Neil Surkan
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2026
$19.95 / 9780228027317
Reviewed by Steven Ross Smith
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Neil Surkan’s Empties is full of adventurous precision. With the care of, say, an analogue watchmaker, or a musical arranger, he places his pinions, his notes – in this case, words – with a sharp and focussed eye, ear, and mind, into tight, efficient, poetic mechanisms.
While his title can be interpreted as suggestive of loss of positives – hope, joy, light – this reader finds jubilance in Surkan’s articulations.
In four sections, the poet approaches structural possibilities through varied poetic lenses. Third poem in, the titular “Empties,” we’re shown that there might be a bit of ‘un-convention’ coming:
And who / isn’t my neighbour / now? We alley / bottles
mouthing / ooooo / when gusts prowl, empties / blown
Though Surkan, current Nanaimo Poet Laureate, sings mostly through the first person, his inventive syntax shifts beyond the confessional. He is a surprising observer, an empath, an inventor, who strikes me as, at heart, a lyric poet:
Each word I mouth mouth firms
the gap between the world and all
that sings, creeps, or dies,
outside my poem. Spasmodic,
In the book’s second section—Faith—the poet digs into language that renders sonic, succinct, and imagistic lines. In the poem “Ruin”: “A slanted shadow through the unshuttered / window of a slum-raftered barn.” And in “Murmurations”:
Above the marsh, wing
on wing on wing on
wing, starlings appear
to be cat’s
cradling, refractions
of reactions glimmering
through the mottled
dusk —
In his long, sectioned poem, “The Deep,” Surkan (Unbecoming) evokes time, transience, family lineage, media screens, and his poetry itself, in image and event, with compressed lines and surprising leaps:
I pause to zoom
on leaves of
moss, our son’s
sleepy lids, string-
line-levelled knot
garden, sea
stars on black
lava rock, but can’t
go though
Often Surkan blooms as a nature poet, flora emerging in his careful, well-wrought lines, as in “Recapitated”:
Thimbleberry leaves, soft as dog-
eared scraps of suede, brush
my face as I totter over a mossy cedar
There’s an attentive ear here to enjoy—listening to language’s sounds and rhythms—even just the syllabics of “thimbleberry”—a lovely word; or the wash of ‘s’ in “scraps of suede, brush”. And isn’t that lush, the way “suede” plays twice, first as a tactile, evocative image itself, and then verbed up and felt again with “brush”; and finally, the ‘o’s and ‘r’s of the last line in which the poet appears, vividly “tottering”. Poetic craft in exquisite action.
Throughout, the poet exercises some variance on poetic form, but not straying too far from stanzaic structure, whether in couplet, single well-spaced lines, or multi-lined stanza blocks. However, in the last section—Die Workbook—Surkan offers a bit of play, a game of possibilities.
He drops words through what he refers to as a “trap door”. He presents a line with a blank space, then offers a ‘drop-down’ list of single word choices, hovering one by one below the emptiness, each waiting to be pulled up to fill that space. The reader can choose, and can contemplate possibilities, pondering how a single word changes the phrase, how different meanings surface in relation to the choice. The exercise reveals something of a poet’s methods.
This ‘fun’ game—its process—also comments on the poetic act itself: how the poet must choose each and every word to place, while omitting others; it’s a glimpse into the combination of randomness and precision, intuition and serendipity, in the wordsmith’s act of poetic composition.
Poetry, no matter how serious, is after all, an act of play, and Surkan invites us into the act—the way a reader must enter the game—the poem—and engage, in order to truly experience it. Thereby it is interaction, not passive reception.
But Surkan’s play is not quite done. He approaches the exit with a flourish, a short suite of poems that recombine and add to preceding phrases. And finally, he skips, with his son—his ”little caster”—some rocks, his poet’s casts, on existential surfaces, while acknowledging the depths and mysteries he’s also reached for in this collection.
Indeed, “Empties” belies its title. Beautifully rendered it offers the reader a full poetic experience.
*
Steven Ross Smith enjoys muddling with words and books in Victoria, BC. His writing, swayed by experimenters in early Toronto days, juxtaposes disparate threads, as in his seven volume poetic series fluttertongue. His decades-long westward migration through Canada’s landscapes implanted continuing amazement and many poetic influences. His fourteenth book is Glimmer: Short Fictions, from Radiant Press. Most recently, The Green Rose, a chapbook collaboration with Phil Hall appeared in 2024. Smith was Banff Poet Laureate, 2018-21. He is currently absorbed in a rappy-spoken-word album project, as SloLo Smithy, streaming on BandCamp. [Editor’s note: Steven reviewed recent books by David Romanda, Kaie Kellough, Jan Zwicky, Joanna Streetly, Mary Ann Moore, Sharon Thesen, and Jacqueline Bell, Jeff Derksen, Stephen Collis, Harold Rhenisch, Kevin Spenst, Eimear Laffan, and Tim Lilburn for BCR.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line 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