Squid Inc, 86

John Charles was Rare Books Librarian at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

The nine Southern-Ontario poets represented in Squid Inc 86 banded together in 1979 and published their first volume of Squid Inc in1982. They are able, experienced craftspeople, united by their shared love of language.

Working without an editor, the group allots ten pages to each of its members: one page for a photograph and nine for poems. It seems to be a viable system. I put the book down feeling I had been invited into each poet’s imagination long enough to know whether or not I wished to continue the relationship. (There are plenty of opportunities to do so, as five of these poets have published their own anthologies, and the others publish regularly in journals and literary magazines.) Since it is impossible to comment on all nine poets in a review of this length, I will mention a few of my favourites.

Heather Cadsby has an admirable control over her material and she deals with paradox and with the fact that “the present isn’t outlived” in an urbane yet passionate way. Of the nine poets, her voice is the most memorable.

James Deahl’s poems scour the mind by juxtaposing real and surreal images. Disrupting our complacency whenever he can, he suggests that “Everywhere [is] violence/everywhere the immaculate silence.” I am also very fond of Richard Lush’s spare, memorable images. Eschewing rhetoric, he seems to have decided to “concentrate/on my own language until I understand.” Donna Langevin speaks with such incisive clarity that she almost makes her experiences our own.

Individual poems that impressed me in this attractive anthology are Maria Jacob’s “Europe Revisited,” Eric Layman’s “Leviathan,” Pam Oxendine’s “Legacy,” all of Jim Robert’s haikus, and Martin Singleton’s “Dream Before Dawn.” All nine poets repay rereading.