cover image Ground Water

Ground Water

Colin Browne. Talon Books, $15.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-88922-465-0

Poet, mapmaker, film conservator and documentarian, Colin Browne is a co-founder of the Kootenay School of Writing. Like Vancouver neighbor Robin Blaser, Browne fosters in Groundwater not only polyvocality but a ranging polyformality of spacious collage, tight lists, knotted rambunctious densities of word and sentence, sonic wordplay, narrative and lyric. There are line drawings throughout that echo map symbols and petroglyphs, heightening the high-stakes erudition and linguistic play: ""Petal weapons abandoned. / He ruled in splendor. A Ton Ton Macoute of the heart."" The poem-as-film-treatment ""Altar"" juxtaposes observations of nature, social behavior, historical texts, excerpts from Canadian military law manuals, Native American myth, potent moments of family dynamic and physical peril.