Poet’s ideas start as drops

A white bird soaring north dominates the cover of Metis poet Joanne Arnott’s fifth collection of poems, “A Night For The Lady”.  A gifted memoirist , blogger and poet, Arnott is a master chef with words, and has cooked her feast slowly over six years to produce a lyrical delicacy.

In her opening poem “watching the earth breathe”, Arnott sets the tone for the collection:

“ideas travel first in drops

rills of thought become creeks

springs erupt into streams, streams into rivers

rivers open-mouthed to the sea”

Arnott’s words form sentences, sentences form stanzas, stanzas form poems, and poems form a collection.

She writes with reverence of Native women living in Spirit World and on earth: Sky Woman (“we are water settling from sky”); Aboriginal mothers (“i put sunflower seeds on my belly/i used to read aloud to my son/so he could hear our bones”); missing and murdered Aboriginal women (“their spirits gather and rise, and rise/all of our dead sisters lifted…along the highway of tears”).

Most of the poems are accessible, some are experimental and a bit confusing, mixing numbers with words; some display Arnott’s love of word play (“culture tangled nots and knots and naughts”); some start with a thanks to writers who have influenced  her (Ray Carver, Connie Fife, Maria Campbell); and some bring you to beautiful places in the poet’s life, both past and present.

Take flight with Arnott on her word journey. You’ll travel through experimental poems, honour poems, inspirational poems, and love poems.  It will be a ride you won’t regret or forget.

— Reviewed by Jorge Antonio Vallejos