The Pre-Geography of Snow

Kim Van Vliet is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer.

This is an unadorned volume, stark white with an ink-purple photograph and cover print. There is no blurb on the back, no introduction nor any information about the author — no frills. This would be alright except that the cover is already falling off my three-month-old $9.50 copy (not a no-frills price).

There are 30 poems in the book and these are divided into 4 sections which are untitled but thematically arranged: 1. survival, 2. love, 3. relationships, and 4. life. The natural world permeates the imagery of these poems. Weather, seasons, plant and animal life provide the colours, textures, and characters of these northern landscapes.

The picture on the cover looks to me like a blanket of snow with the contours of a face in relief showing through. It is a direct reflection of the poems themselves. They are about interiors and exteriors and the way they affect and reflect each other.

… Our words
saying love, saying home
freeze in front of us.
We walk into them
and they shatter like crystal.

The writing is sharp, precise, and the poems are short; many poems are largely descriptive with attention to details like winged beetles, bird skeletons, and the watery distortions made by rain on glass. Other poems, about particular people, are active and specific in their approach:

… it was only his anger
I saw. His knack
for hating. Mine
for misunderstanding. The great
scream that was his life.

In this work there is a sense of life rummaging beneath the harsh exteriors of snow and night, pain and damage — a sniff of spring.