Description
Exploring the intersection of language, culture, and history, D.S. Stymeist’s The Bone Weir is an eclectic collection that gives voice to the dead, the obscured, and the forgotten. One of the book’s poetic streams considers the disconcerting conjunction of human evolution and the relatively recent extinction of many ice-age species. Other poems excavate buried colonial history and revisit indigenous legend to reimagine the genesis of national landscape. At play with these concerns, the poet builds on his experiences of bush life in the Canadian North to problematize our conception of shared cultural heritage and knowledge. By turns urgent, observant, celebratory, this collection invites readers to reflect on our often troubled relationship with the natural environment, the past, art, and the erotic.
About the authors
Micheline Maylor is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Calgary (2016-18) and was the Calgary Public Library Author in Residence in fall 2016. She teaches creative writing at Mount Royal University. Her most recent book Little Wildheart (UAlberta Press) was long-listed for both the Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster awards. Find her online at www.michelinemaylor.com.
Awards
- Short-listed, Canadian Authors’ Literary Award
- Short-listed, BPAA Award for Cover Design
Excerpt: The Bone Weir (by (author) David Stymeist; edited by Micheline Maylor; cover design or artwork by Tim Nokes; designed by Neil Petrunia)
Pinhole Man
At Pinhole Cave, another grotto pun:
a crook-backed man with erect penis
scrimshawed haphazardly onto
the side of a thick slab of rib –
the hard bone mammalian armour,
now playfully turned to an après dine
canvas where in thin cartoonish lines
a lone dancer carouses in his mask.
Our liminal Adam, first root and seed,
and all that untimely, unimagined woe
to the woolly, hairy beasts of field.
