Uproar's Your Only Music: New Poems/Memoir

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Vancouver author Brian Brett’s two-part book—the first a prose
memoir, the second 75 pages of new poems—is an inspiring read about
his androgynous life, his search for identity, his bouts of despair, his
battles with his father, and his eventual limited successes as an author
and a poet. Born an androgyne with Kellerman’s syndrome, Brett
suffered embarrassment, unspeakable pain, and tremendous cruelty at the
hands of others. By age 15, he suffered from osteoporosis, was taking
LSD and high dosages of testosterone, and looked like an 11-year-old
girl.

From an unhappy childhood, Brett progressed to an even wilder adult
life of drugs and hard living. He hitchhiked over 75,000 miles in 10
years and worked a variety of odd jobs, from choke-setter to amusement
park clown to powderman blaster. He suffered innumerable indignities,
including physical assaults and rape, and maintained a love-hate
relationship with his father. His saving grace was the love of reading
and writing instilled in him by a Bella Bella chief and his Grade 11
English teacher. Today, he is more or less content in his marriage and
with his passions for “gardens, poems, ceramics.”

Just as compelling as the memoir are poems with titles like “Where We
Live,” “Branded,” “No One Mourns the Cook,” and “Soldiers of
Al-Qaeda” and memorable lines like “I pack the lives of the dead in
the suitcase of my stomach.” Told with earthy humour, compassion, and
uncompromising honesty, Brett’s story demands to be listened to.