Travelling Light.

Lydia Forssander-Song is a sessional instructor in the English
Department at Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C.

In this collection, Soutar-Hynes eschews capital letters, periods, and commas. Instead of complete sentences, she utilizes fragments, gaps, and dashes to great effect. Her speaker explains in “on atmosphere and sentences”: “writing its own solitary sentence confine- / ment self-imposed words escaping into / text             prisoners of the page from time-to-time out on parole / taking a sounding.” Soutar-Hynes’ breakaway from formal grammar is part of her mandate for “travelling light.”

On this journey, Soutar-Hynes packs many abstract images and references to water, colour, light, religion, meteorology, geology, geography, art, and literature that may appear unapproachable, cold, and distant. However, the warmth and intimacy of Soutar-Hynes’ vision is apparent. In “of solitude and desire,” she writes about the “erotics of earth.” That poem begins “sheets of ice / and desire / exert gravitation the closer / they come to bodies / and water.” In the final poem in this collection, “jazz on the rocks,” the abstract and the concrete come together in “here sunset lingers like a lover lightly / on the body silent as the / scent of salt            tracing silver.” Soutar-Hynes carefully places the known in the light of the unknown. In “routes,” she writes, “pool / your words            in sacred places / breathe light / ride the after- / glow to the next station slowly / disengage.” Her interaction with articles in newspapers and journals, fiction, poetry, and paintings displays her attachment to and engagement with her world.

Her relationship with the wider world takes a personal turn in poems about her mother (“encounters: with my mother”), her father (“steady as we go”), and her aunt (“tufetto sands”). In “tufetto sands,” Soutar-Hynes notes, “each one of us with / aneurysms of one kind/ or another / marking time —.” She adds to this sense of journeying in the next poem about her father: “i watch his hands / hold the wheel close to the heart / light touch steady / as we go.” Her poem about her mother opens the section entitled “mother-tongue” and dialogues with Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door. This collection takes the reader on a journey that is well worth embarking on.