Six Months Rent

Chris Faiers, winner of the 1987 Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award,
is author of Foot Through the Ceiling.

In this, Walker’s first poetry collection, most of the poems are
located in Toronto, as seen from the outlook of a young, impoverished
writer. The poems’ titles include a litany of settings for rundown
apartments and flats, “Roxton Road,” “Dovercourt,” “Dundas
West.”

Many poets dominate their poems with their personas, especially in
their early collections. Walker is quite remarkable in that she has
chosen the opposite tack. Initially I found this lack of personality
confusing and annoying, until I realized that my preconceptions were
interfering with her style. Changing gears, I reread the book on her
terms and found her technique has a satisfying attraction.

There is often only a single mention of a person in a poem, and
occasionally none. This perspective gives the poems a Zen quality, where
the significance of the landscape is at least as great as that of its
inhabitants. I found this reminiscent of haiku, and indeed many poems
have a haiku-like feel. “History / a vacant lot in the middle of an /
industrial area / broken / chain mesh fence surrounding a field / where
grass and Queen Anne’s lace grow / from underneath / decomposing
concrete / a dark window lit by nightmare.”

Walker’s strong suits are restraint and imagism, often mutually
exclusive qualities in a poet. I found the emotional restraint so
pronounced as to create an overriding atmosphere of depression, but
depression is often the primary emotion of a young artist in the big
city. I look forward to reading further collections of Walker’s work,
and anticipate she will employ a range of emotions as she develops her
craft.