Crossroads Cant

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and a
poet. He is the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

The title of this book reflects the multicultural nature of a
performance poetry group comprising Mary Elizabeth Grace, Mark Seabrook,
Shafiq, and Ann Shin. The range of voices is interesting. Seabrook is
from the Sagamok Reserve, Shafiq is a Dominican immigrant, Shin has
lived in Toronto and Seoul, and Grace is an Irish-Hungarian Canadian
from Burk’s Falls, Ontario. They all make use of their backgrounds.

The problem with printed texts from performance poets is the silence of
the printed page. The most interesting poetry here is by Shafiq and
Seabrook. They make use of colloquial registers (like Shafiq’s patois)
that lift the work off the page. Shin’s work is mainstream in
language, but she has a complexity of statement that compensates for its
reduction to the printed page. Grace comes across as a rather flat
stylist, expressing familiar lyrical sentiments in a style not too far
removed from pop songs.

Crossroads Cant is uneven but worth buying for its strong moments and
its range of styles.