Habitat

Allison Sivak is a librarian in the Science and Technology Library,
University of Alberta.

These powerful poems begin in the very real details of life on an
island. Wheeler, who lives on Lasqueti Island off the B.C. coast,
anchors her work in the concrete details of the tideflats, the uses of
flowers, the early spring of the West Coast, and the effects of time and
weather on her home. Her virtuosity is such that she can use these
details as jumping-off points for venturing beyond the immediate
present. “Back in December,” for example, begins, “The wind blew
so hard that night the light bent, / […] The roof joined the
performance, shedding / a swath of shingles we’d be finding for weeks
in the woods, / here, then there, the way bad news / dawns gradually.”
She links her own story of the power of nature to that of a friend:
“Back in September a friend left the Trade Center lobby, / no more
roof or else / nothing but roof / and then more roof / around him.”
Linking the immediate with the past, the local with the global, Wheeler
writes a poetry that is both broadly political and yet very particular.