by Allison Douglas-Tourner

Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$19.95

ISBN 9781778690433

I’m fond of image-based poetry, and it’s one reason I enjoy reading poems written as haiku and senryu. Likely you remember haiku from school days: in its traditional form, it’s a three-line, 17-syllable nature based poem with a five-seven-five syllable count. It conveys a single moment in which the poet suddenly sees or realizes something. An aha! moment, if you will. Senryu is similarly structured, but it’s more concerned with human nature and often contains irony or satire. Both forms originated in Japan, and both are unrhymed.

Victoria, BC’s Allison Douglas-Tourner recently released a lovely collection, Sticks & Bones: Haiku and Senryu, which reminded me of why I enjoy these concise forms so much. It’s easy to find inspiration from the natural world on Vancouver Island, and she explains that the island’s “beaches, woods, and meadows” have long been inspiring her. Ravens, those busy gatherers of “sticks and bones,” have also stirred her to write, and the attractive cover image of her small, square-shaped book features a single raven with twigs in its beak. There’s one page-centred poem per page with ample white space surrounding it … an ideal format for these untitled poems which invite one to linger, to roll the images and sounds and metaphors around in the mind before moving on to the next one.

Consider the tenderness, the alliteration and the metaphor in the following:

the gentle touch

of sunlight on stone

a tiny pair of shoes

 I admire the poet’s ability to think of sunlight as “a tiny pair of shoes,” and this way of seeing and presenting things differently is the hallmark of good poetry. Here’s another wonderful metaphor:

last leaf to fall …

a threadbare

handkerchief

The ellipsis directs a reader to pause and it imitates the slow journey of a leaf from branch to ground. It’s autumn as I write this, so this seasonal piece especially appeals to me, and I love the idea of a leaf, probably shot-through with holes, being a “threadbare handkerchief.” And in this fall-themed poem, I drink in the warmth and revel, again, in the delicious metaphor:

autumn sun

a slow cup of

smoky tea

Douglas-Tourner is also adept at personification. She has a moth in a window “[holding] the storm at bay,” and a tree “scratches/at the shutters.” She uses assonance to great advantage in a poem that juxtaposes a blinking flashlight and a cricket “that/didn’t exist.” Her skill in writing about the senses is evident in several pieces. She writes of “the mildew scent/of mice” and of “coaxing the crystal/to sing.” Many of these meditative and meticulous poems were previously published in international journals and on blogs. I will pick this book up again and again, as whether rooted in the natural or the domestic world, these tiny poems “[give] the imagination room to breathe,” and they make an impressive emotional mark.

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