Dream Museum

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

The monotype cover art by Ginette Knaff, the artist to whom the second
section of this book is dedicated, serves as an introduction to the many
aspects of life and language that Liliane Welch explores. The Ginette
Knaff Poems transport us to Venice, where “[a] fleet of gondolas
glides through the fog.” We explore a “[p]ortal” that “could be
the door in a narrow Venetian street” and see “the painter lingering
/ Near.” We also see “Canada through a Monotype-Collage,” which is
the voice of the poet reacting to the brush of the artist.

The first section, Diptych, establishes the dynamic tension between
Canada, to which Welch emigrated in 1967, and Luxembourg, where she was
born in 1937. Winter months in Canada give way to spring in “Pesto,”
and everyday images of meals, sleep, marriage, lovemaking, and death are
made fascinating as they are encountered in different parts of Europe.

The next three sections are entitled Human Dreams (which boasts a
beautiful poem for Welch’s friend and colleague Kay Smith, as well as
poems that evoke Dickinson, Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Rimbaud),
Accounts, and Jazz. The collection concludes with “Twilight
Toccatas,” a long poem featuring two women who have grown apart as a
result of geographical and cultural separations. Living in Canada, one
knows that “the vinegar and ash / of these old cultures will
pursue,” even in Acadia. The other sees that “[f]ifteen miles south
of the Moselle, Europe’s largest nuclear plant / puffs up” and
recognizes that this is the reality of life in Luxembourg.

Welch’s 14th book demands of its readers some knowledge of the poets
and artists to whom it frequently alludes, as well as some understanding
of the history and geography of the Old World countries it depicts.