The Peak

Lit: A cross-section of High Altitude Poetry

By Peak Writers

Instead of writing a standard preview for High Altitude Poetry’s open mic night (which takes place this Tuesday, October 16 in the Highland Pub at 7:00 p.m.), The Peak decided to cut their latest issue in four and see what our panel came up with.

1) “Stuck in September” by Maureen Watt is a poem of stagnancy. While still, the speaker can reflect. The line, “Last year was of freedom, great friendships and love” might or might not be true — oftentimes memories are romanticised when they have had time to rest in the mind.

Why should one equate no longer seeing a father “with wet hair” or “with a towel” to becoming distant? The poem “Shower” by Nyla Obaid is disturbing. It gives me the feeling that incestuous activity was something that perverted father and confused child once enjoyed.

Tanyss Knowles’s “Postbox on E. Hastings” is a little mysterious and that makes it interesting. The character she creates seems to pop out of nowhere. Maybe that is part of the mystery. Or maybe there is no mystery at all.

It seems that “Ecstasy” by Lia Haleem is describing sadomasochistic fantasies. The speaker asks for a “joyous rapture” and I can only think of one thing. —Shara Lee

2) I always feel sorry for untitled poems. Why would an author pour so much thought into creating verse without bothering to give it an avatar for its identity? Maybe Morvarid Mehraba’s untitled poem is implicity pondering that lack of identity. Judging by the poem’s unfinished, vaguely written musings, I think the problem is a little more serious.

Colin Stewart doesn’t fare much better, presenting vanilla prose poems that draw on self-pity (“minor key”) and alienation (“dear rupert”).

“Careful, China” is a pleasant reprieve from Stewart and Mehraba. The “cheap white porcelain” under the skin nicely complements the finger running “down and around the thick chunk that was grandma’s best china.” Taryn Hubbard does well to make me wonder if she’s referencing modernisation theory and the Beijing Olympics when she alludes to “the sports games you could never watch” before warning us to be “careful with the china, my little darling: / It could break.” —Jason Sunder

3) Maybe it’s because I’m not a regular reader of poetry, but I often find that poets come off a little bit selfish. It’s not that I think they’re greedy or anything, but poems I do read almost always seem to focus on an experience the author has had with their lover. I get it, I get it — they left you.

Stephen Elliot-Buckley’s “Blinding Possibilities” is such a voyeuristic journey of yearning for a late-night romantic date sharing a dessert (you can just see them feeding each other), ending with one watching the other breathe as they sleep. Yuck.

On the other hand, in “Daytime TV,” Gary Smith seems as though he’s inviting the reader into his daily routine of breaking into his neighbour’s apartment to watch television with his romantic cohort. We don’t have to read about the details of an eyelid; instead, one may find himself agreeing with Smith about the common belief that daytime programming is pretty subpar. —Warren Haas

4) The September issue’s last four poems are a nice balance of understated beauty and overblown schlock. David McLean’s “Horse Chestnut” is a familiar pastoral image of a chestnut tree re-imagined in blazing technicolour, but its simplicity and nuance are drowned out by the lumbering, drawling beasts lying on either side of it. Tanyss Knowles and Catherine Ballanchey’s poems are both riddled with cliché, one using a stilted southern accent to feign country-road nostalgia, while the other pursues a vague ‘rich fatcats are killing the planet’ to its predictable, SUV-driving conclusion.

Things change abrubtly, however, at Rob Taylor’s “after the game,” which is far and away the best poem here. It’s a simple progression of action — people leave a football game “to the / stop-and-go waves of the constable’s / silly glowing baton” and wait for the SkyTrain — but Taylor gleans from it a beautiful image of drunk sports fans leaning on war statues, beating their “liquid chests” and channelling a patriotism that we’re told no longer exists. It seems that understatement is the lesson half of these poets can teach, and the other half desperately needs to learn. —Mike Hingston