The Peak

The bricklayer of poets

By Deanne Beattie, Arts Editor

More information about Child of Saturday including shopping information can be found at roblucastaylor.com.

Vancouver writer Rob Taylor is the bricklayer of poets. Taylor has been writing poetry since 2003 and has had his poetry published in over 30 magazines and journals, self-publishing two chapbooks to date. Taylor’s most recent collection of poetry, Child of Saturday, is a formidable addition to the young writer’s cannon, and evidence of a new sophistication in his approach to composition and style. Evidently constructing his creative career the way he builds a poem — carefully, methodically, and with expertise that demonstrates a deliberate mastery of the trade — Taylor leaves me anxious to see him compose the most challenging monument of all: the full-length book of poetry.

As an artist, Taylor is a careful architect of the moment, building word upon word and line upon line so that the purpose and structure of each poem is only revealed in the final syllables. He holds the reader off, guiding them through complex narrative and alert detail, only revealing the nature of his monolith when you can regard the poem as a whole. And often, the intent of his poetry is to fashion a simple moment — a shared glance between characters, the bowing of heads — as beautiful and extraordinarily important despite its humility.

Taylor’s talent for careful construction has been evident from his days as co-founder and frequent contributor to SFU’s High Altitude Poetry, and from the printing of his first chapbook in 2006, splattered earth. Although his work is frequently politically-minded — splattered earth was a collection of poems written following a trip to China — Taylor evidences an evolution in his style from the inward-looking, emotion-mining approach to poetry to one that is more outward-looking and observant of the lives and, yes, moments of others.

Child of Saturday is a collection of 11 poems that were written while Taylor lived in Ghana, West Africa. Like many post-colonial African countries, Ghana suffers with a history of oppression and a climate of economic depravation today. Taylor writes a snapshot of the country after 50 years of independence: slave castles in tact, busy schoolhouses and market places, fishermen and sports games — and everywhere he goes, a memory of domination.

One of the strongest poems in the collection, “The Slave Castle of Elmina,” opens the chapbook and describes the “last days of / rebellious slaves” evident in the empty prison, and how it served the memory of “how the soldiers / would put five or six of them in and not / open the door again until they were all dead.” Not all of the poems are so direct; “After making a desperate leap” tells of a cricket game where the keeper “rises and pulls his shirt / over his head, shaking / it before him like the dusty / flag of a godless nation” — contributing to an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion in the people of Ghana that one detects in this book.

Child of Saturday is well researched and constructed, a literary accomplishment only outshone by the author’s larger Ghana project, the One Ghana, One Voice online literary journal towards which all proceeds from sales of Child of Saturday are directed. Taylor provides a space for the work of Ghanaian poets to reach a worldwide audience at oneghanaonevoice.com.

Piece by piece, Taylor is seemingly building a most meaningful and respectable literary career. Earnestly and passionately, I urge you to seek out his work and the One Ghana, One Voice project — and if you’re eager, make room on your bookshelves now for the future work, hopefully, probably, definitely to come from this young writer.