Swerve

Lisa A. Dickson is a freelance writer living in Guelph, Ontario.

“These works are to be read aloud,” advises the opening page of this
collection of action poetry. As the title suggests, the rhythms of the
poems evoke the near-miss and thrill of high speeds in heavy traffic.
The chants, rants, and rhymes contribute to the text’s momentum of
irreverence, transgression, and the erotic. Wilson combines rage,
pathos, and humor in poems that, for all their careening energy, are
nevertheless tightly controlled in form and emotional intensity.

The two action poems that make up the first half of the collection
combine the visual spectacle of drama with the economy and intensity of
poetry. “Hung Drawn & Quartered” traces the erotic journey of Lord
Trustworthy and the figurehead of his ship, Mea Culpa Carmen, a journey
that ends in a dance of death at the bottom of the sea. In “Taboo X
Two,” a bird tries to telepathically teach a salmon to fly out of
captivity and back to the spawning ground. It is in the final section of
the book, the “Poem-o-Logues,” that Wilson demonstrates her poetic
range to best effect. “Split Seconds” is a critique of urban
materialism in which “Rural Robutrons and Urban Glamizons meet / At
feeding time on Queen Street.” Complementing this shivlike satire is
the tenderness of poems like “Diane Di Prima”: “She speaks to me
and I can still feel / Her flight / She is Diane Di Prima / She is a
magic stone that holds light.”

Sheri-D Wilson is nothing if not an aggressive driver. But she has both
hands firmly on the wheel.