Silence of the Country

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Like any tale of departure and return, Silence of the Country is about
finding what was lost upon reaching home. In her excellent preface,
Gunnars tells of her trip to Norway, the sense of poverty there, and her
inability to speak Norwegian, all of which led to a distinct writer’s
block. Like Rasselas, or any other quester away from home, Gunnars must
rediscover her British Columbia home and how to write again.

The title poem speaks of the poet’s reclamation of her home and its
furnishings, her renegotiation of the artifacts of her life. Though she
has stepped into this place many times before, like a Zen river it is
never the same, and she must experience her surroundings with all of her
senses in order to ground herself. In “After Amsterdam,” Gunnars
explains how a memory of the Italian cook in the movie on her flight out
of that city has become a ritual and part of her renewed life back in
British Columbia. “Every Saturday still / we open a Chianti for the
pasta pesto, / we remake the day we flew over Amsterdam / and into
Vancouver.”

Gunnars, a professor of writing at the University of Alberta, has
written six other poetry collections and five works of prose narrative,
one of which was a finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award.
This rewarding poetic journey of rediscovery is recommended to any
library looking to add to its poetry section.