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the weight of dew by Daniela Elza (Mother Tongue $19.95)
Born in Bulgaria and partially raised in Nigeria, Daniela Bouneva Elza has a Masters in English Philology from Sofia University. She acquired a second Masters, in Linguistics at Ohio University (USA). In 1999 she immigrated where she gained her Ph.D in Education from Simon Fraser University.
In 2010, Elza was the recipient of Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She is the Vancouver editor for the Pacific Poetry Project, an anthology of three cities (Portland, Seattle and Vancouver) forthcoming from Ooligan Press (US) in the Fall of 2012.
With an introduction by Aislinn Hunter, Daniela Elza's debut collection of poetry, the weight of dew has been described as a literal, metaphorical and philosophical journey from Vancouver inland through (mostly) British Columbia. Here it is reviewed by Hannah Main-van der Kamp.
In this debut collection, linguist and philologist Daniela Elza shapes an unusual format to convey the fugitive nature of words.
Using italics, spaces, dashes, alternate punctuation and broken-up words, she weaves a web of print that does not restrict itself to conventional verse form.
For example:
"as my heart
(b (e (a) t) s)
Such writing can be likened to very loose knitting. Each poem-most short enough for one page-has many dropped stitches, dropped with skillful intent.
Playing with words and the spaciousness between them, she's not asking them to carry much weight.
It's difficult to replicate the shape of these word nets in a short review. One wonders if they can even be read aloud. Readers will have to see these poems for themselves.
The so-called "language poets,"; most of them academics (Legris, Tostevin), have had a profile in B.C. for decades. At times these poets risk being too clever with their typography as with the over-use of brackets.
Elza quotes from, and acknowledges the influence of, the poetics of Tim Lilburn regarding the hubris of trying to capture the world with words. How helpless words really are when confronted with the particularity, the "thisness"; of things.
Lilburn, poet/philosopher and teacher, has articulated an approach, especially to Nature, that questions a writer's ability to "capture"; the essence of anything let alone understand it. Even so there is the paradoxical importance of continuing to write poems with reverence and humility.
Does Elza intend for the words to be read in a sequence? It's un-
clear and part of the strategy. Appearing to not be trying to control a word flow is also a technique, an artifice.
Except for the titles and the liberal sprinkling of quotes from other writers, it's possible to read these phraselets in any order. But then they are not intended to evoke linear thoughts. Feelings, thoughts and images dance on the page and the page, the only apparent structure, can hardly contain them. The dance has eccentric rhythms.
Mostly concerned with birds, water, light, sky, leaves, the first and last of the three sections have an ephemeral quality.
The middle section of the three is a record/journal of a car trip with very young children through BC. Here the reader who longs for some concrete narrative can relate to geography/history and touristic experiences: Osoyoos, Fort Steele, picnics, motels, elk and moose.
At one point, the poet asks us to "suspend / your ability to comprehend."; But the scattered text and rich word play in the weight of dew may still be barricades for some readers.
It's pleasant, nonetheless, to wander through these verbally deconstructed landscapes, not unlike engagement in any absorbing activity when the talky self-conscious brain lets itself be parked.
Elza's imaginative alterations of words will raise a few eyebrows, thoughtfully. The arrangements will halt the speed of the hungry eye and give it cause to pause. Isn't that, in part, what poetry is for?
978-1-896949-21-5
Hannah Main - van der Kamp does not knit but tries to hold words loosely on the Upper Sunshine Coast.
[BCBW 2012]
In 2010, Elza was the recipient of Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She is the Vancouver editor for the Pacific Poetry Project, an anthology of three cities (Portland, Seattle and Vancouver) forthcoming from Ooligan Press (US) in the Fall of 2012.
With an introduction by Aislinn Hunter, Daniela Elza's debut collection of poetry, the weight of dew has been described as a literal, metaphorical and philosophical journey from Vancouver inland through (mostly) British Columbia. Here it is reviewed by Hannah Main-van der Kamp.
In this debut collection, linguist and philologist Daniela Elza shapes an unusual format to convey the fugitive nature of words.
Using italics, spaces, dashes, alternate punctuation and broken-up words, she weaves a web of print that does not restrict itself to conventional verse form.
For example:
"as my heart
(b (e (a) t) s)
Such writing can be likened to very loose knitting. Each poem-most short enough for one page-has many dropped stitches, dropped with skillful intent.
Playing with words and the spaciousness between them, she's not asking them to carry much weight.
It's difficult to replicate the shape of these word nets in a short review. One wonders if they can even be read aloud. Readers will have to see these poems for themselves.
The so-called "language poets,"; most of them academics (Legris, Tostevin), have had a profile in B.C. for decades. At times these poets risk being too clever with their typography as with the over-use of brackets.
Elza quotes from, and acknowledges the influence of, the poetics of Tim Lilburn regarding the hubris of trying to capture the world with words. How helpless words really are when confronted with the particularity, the "thisness"; of things.
Lilburn, poet/philosopher and teacher, has articulated an approach, especially to Nature, that questions a writer's ability to "capture"; the essence of anything let alone understand it. Even so there is the paradoxical importance of continuing to write poems with reverence and humility.
Does Elza intend for the words to be read in a sequence? It's un-
clear and part of the strategy. Appearing to not be trying to control a word flow is also a technique, an artifice.
Except for the titles and the liberal sprinkling of quotes from other writers, it's possible to read these phraselets in any order. But then they are not intended to evoke linear thoughts. Feelings, thoughts and images dance on the page and the page, the only apparent structure, can hardly contain them. The dance has eccentric rhythms.
Mostly concerned with birds, water, light, sky, leaves, the first and last of the three sections have an ephemeral quality.
The middle section of the three is a record/journal of a car trip with very young children through BC. Here the reader who longs for some concrete narrative can relate to geography/history and touristic experiences: Osoyoos, Fort Steele, picnics, motels, elk and moose.
At one point, the poet asks us to "suspend / your ability to comprehend."; But the scattered text and rich word play in the weight of dew may still be barricades for some readers.
It's pleasant, nonetheless, to wander through these verbally deconstructed landscapes, not unlike engagement in any absorbing activity when the talky self-conscious brain lets itself be parked.
Elza's imaginative alterations of words will raise a few eyebrows, thoughtfully. The arrangements will halt the speed of the hungry eye and give it cause to pause. Isn't that, in part, what poetry is for?
978-1-896949-21-5
Hannah Main - van der Kamp does not knit but tries to hold words loosely on the Upper Sunshine Coast.
[BCBW 2012]
Submitted on January 19, 2012 in By David.
