Domestic Fool

Carolyn Hlus was a lecturer in English literature at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Erin Mouré, who was born in Calgary in 1955 and now lives in Montreal, where she works for the railroad, has long proven herself a workers’ poet and, to a major degree, a feminist poet. She was involved with the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union “Work to Write” series and the “Women and Words” Conference in 1983. Her poetry has won her wide acclaim: a Governor-General’s Award nomination and the 1982 National Magazine Award for Poetry. On the tailwind of her three previous publications — Empire, York Street (1979), Whisky Vigil, and Wanted Alive (1983) — her recent collection, Domestic Fuel, swirls in with the vigor of a spring blizzard.

Domestic Fuel is divided into four sections: “A Sporting Life,” “Speaking in Tongues,” “Thaw,” and, finally, “Domestic Fuel” (which was first published as a broadside by Flat Singles Press, Vancouver). In each of these sections, Mouré reveals her attachment to Canada’s West, her ongoing wrestle with love and with politics, and her empathy for the hearts and voices of women. Throughout, she shares with her reader her wonderment at the miracle of words.

None of Mouré’s preoccupations can be singled out as dominating separate sections of this book; however, there is a definite softening of tone as the book proceeds. Poems in “A Sporting Life” are definitely more political, grimly serious, and pessimistic than the poems in “Domestic Fuel,” which are personal, sometimes humorous, and frequently optimistic. Compare the messages, for example, in a poem from the former, “Poem Rejected By The Globe & Mail”:

an outright attack on the social system which permits factory layoffs, and, in a poem from the latter, “Remembering Sheep”:

There are, of course, poems of contrast throughout, and many of these poems condemn or praise women. “Sitting Inside Talking” attacks the female Kaffee Klatchers who waste time milling over trivial matters:

In “Jumper Over The Gate,” Mouré indirectly valorizes motherhood by describing the domestic familiarity in the background of a moment in a child’s enlightenment:

Mouré describes the seemingly insignificant details of the scene without diminishing the importance of the child’s moment of inspiration. In fact, Mouré implies that the simple task of paring cheese, the domesticity, is a necessary factor in the child’s spiritual education.

As Mouré observes the significance of domesticity, so, too, does she observe the role of the natural environment. Her imagery is often from the primitive world of nature. Words related to the elements (fire, wind), to the seasons, and to animals prevail, but Mouré realistically sets them in dichotomy with images from the technological world. In “West” she writes:

Here there is no romanticizing. Nature may be beautiful but man has altered it.

What is more delightful about Domestic Fuel, finally, is not the topics that Mouré considers, admittedly very important, but her style. She has developed the art of repetition to a “t.” In almost every poem, she repeats prefixes, words, phrases, or even sentences — not disturbing but enhancing the overall balance of the poem. She has developed a distinctive style that will now win her acclaim beyond our national boundaries.