Brick Books, 2007
Read by Jakub Stachurski
The term ‘woodshedding’ is archaic slang for sound parental thrashings, later adopted by musicians to denote arduous and solitary rehearsal or spontaneous singing. All three definitions are applicable to the poems in S.E. Venart’s first collection, as she contemplates parental folly and isolation, often in a confessional mode. Cigarettes, tea kettles, and domestic animals populate these poems, as the speaker contemplates “this need to scuttle in, clamp down, become / a dark edge in a house.”
This form of domestic lyric is evocative of Gwendolyn MacEwen’s A Breakfast for Barbarians, in which the eponymous meal and domestic backdrop serve to illuminate issues of isolation and the double-edged sword of memory. Though MacEwen’s home was a starting point for her “fight against familiarity,” Venart has, for the most part, accepted her simple abode and stays put.
The constancy of setting (the speaker’s adult and childhood homes) evokes a kind of agoraphobia within the reader as the collection progresses. This sympathetic, physical reaction that Venart creates is impressive, though the homogeneity does, at times, become grating. The personification of animals and unabashed emotional ‘breakthroughs’ border on self-indulgence. For example, after a speaker’s interaction with a moth during a storm, she concludes “and shafts of light / will always be inserted / between the dark pulls of downpour.” The problem is that the poem in question, “Hawthornden Journal”, does not prepare the reader for such a conclusion; and while I value an intuitive, lyrical voice, such insight, when sprung on the reader haphazardly, is ineffectual. This points to an imbalance in the collection, as Venart is capable of conclusive, emotional insight in the final stanza of other poems and saves them from falling into similar obscurity. In “Distraction”, a day holed up in the home does not so much end, as amble to a close with “the wearing down of want.”
While she is not “fighting against familiarity” as MacEwen does, the speaker in Venart’s poems is not a passive bystander. Hidden conflicts are brought to light with thoughtful, unadorned verse. Obtuse imagery and raw emotion do not always satisfy, but are in keeping with the tone of the collection: “this is solitude. There’s no one here to please.”
