The Lease
Written by: Mathew Henderson
(Coach House Books)
[72pp. Perfect Bound]
Toronto, ON
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english
français

From the alien landscape of James Lindsay:

The voice of Mathew Henderson’s The Lease is one of the thousands of young people who head to the Alberta oil fields in search of work, finding only endless labour, condensed male sexuality and constant physical pain. This is an alien landscape lit by the gas flare of the oil rigs where “you are the only thing with feet and hands / on a flat dying moon.”

An Edward Hopper painting if he painted the rigs, these tight, narrative-driven poems are reminiscent of the traveler’s estrangement felt in Antony Di Nardo’s Alien, Correspondent and the overheard-dialouge-while-working-your-ass-off accessibility of Michael Turner’s Company Town. And like those collections, it focuses on the day-to-day. The only thing that breaks up the apathy is when, for a moment, we turn away from the work and notice our surroundings: prairies as wide as the sky, cows grazing at night, “palm-sized moths”, and the terrible cold letting us know we don’t belong here this time of year. Nature reminds us that we are only barely tolerated.

Du paysage extraterrestre de James Lindsay: (Traduit par Odile Leclerc)

La voix de The Lease de … Read More »