Airwave Dreamscapes

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

All of the stories, poems, and plays in this brief anthology have been
broadcast on the University of Western Ontario’s radio station, CHRW,
beginning in 1988. The book’s 12 writers include both the
distinguished (Christopher Dewdney, James Reaney) and the unknown
(co-editor “robin,” is described under “Contributors” as “a
member of the escalation, an association engaged in sonic attacks, art
appropriation, and terminal documents”). The anthology is introduced
by Stan Dragland, who writes: “Alanna Bondar’s poems subvert the
ghettoizing grid composed by whites, masters, the wealthy, the
‘first’ world. The speaker of the poems is both them & us, and her
process—unpinning syntax, abandoning punctuation and capitalization;
visceralizing—dissolves the ampersand.”

As the above quotes may hint, this collection is usually a pretentious
and incomprehensible mishmash. The only exceptions are the two drama
excerpts: the first, by Reaney, is amusing; and the second, by Tim
Lilburn, is powerful and tightly written. Unfortunately, because both
pieces are incomplete, they are impossible to appreciate fully. Given
the general poorness of this book, it is too bad that the editors would
not, or could not, include the two plays in their entirety.