Book Title:  Shift & Switch:  New Canadian Poetry

Author:  Edited by Derek Beaulieu, Jason Christie & Angela Rawlings

Publishing Company: The Mercury Press (www.themercurypress.com)

Year:  2005

# of Pages: 192

ISBN #:  1-55128-116-3

$19.95 Canada

$16.95 U.S. 

3 stars  

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner         

Shift & Switch offers a view of modern Canadian poetry, featuring forty-one poets, the collection seeks to present ‘cutting edge’ poetry, including the works of poets who are active in publishing and performance.  The result is an eclectic collection that features visual poetry as well as word play. 

Cutting edge?  How about this offering from Sharon Harris:  ‘Place a folded poem around a knife blade.  You can cut a reader with it without damaging the poem.  The poem is forced into the reader with the knife.’  Jason Christie, with excerpts from The Robot Suites, asks ‘Have you ever wondered what else might be out there beyond the assertions of circuits and electricity?’  Then he gives a glimpse of a day in the life of a robot who ‘invents the noun and then verbs to the supermarket.’   

Ryan Fitzpatrick, in A Life Less Originary, asks ‘how can I make a life from non-sequiturs?’  Jamie Hilder finds poetry in highway signs while Matthew Hollett presents the visual poem of the ‘rabbit-track alphabet,’ curlicue letters making a playful path across the page.   

Glen Lowry gives the word picture of ‘the peregrine falcon, stately, sits in the bare cherry true the radio says he really nests downtown on the roof of the Royal Centre Tower but today, he stately sits in the cherry tree.’  Natalie Simpson shares the poet's nightmare in Vallarta:  ‘Terrible moments, these.  Nothing to do and must write. . . .  False as old fortuna this problem of poetry.’  Julia Williams offers a sad insightful comment on cancer treatment in an excerpt from My Family Is a Genius:  ‘after radiation Grandma went homeopathic, root vegetables, it doesn't take a genius, rumour of a woman who tried to cure her cancer with carrot juice but instead turned orange, went blind.  Grandma read the Time Life series about the body and by the time she knew what her organs did they'd stopped.’ 

The above provide representative illustration of the contents of this book, new, thought-provoking, head scratching statements from Canada's leading poets.  The collection is a presentation of a moment, a snapshot or the taking of a pulse of a creative community.