Copithorne describes herself as an intermedia worker. She blurs the boundaries between art, poetry, prose, graphic anti-narrative, visual and concrete poetry. Copithorne’s 50-year practice includes poem-drawings, poetry, sequenced short fiction, personal essays, and visual and concrete poetry made both on the page and digitally.

Schmaltz rightly refers to Copithorne as a “vital inspiration for writers and artists” (“Introduction”). He celebrates Copithorne’s practice as a versatile and engaging body of work, worthy of recognition and acclaim, and provides a meticulous play-by-play of the works included in Another Order, giving context for those less familiar with Copithorne and her practice. He also gives a thorough overview of the concerns of Copithorne’s work: body as focal point; interplay between human and nonhuman, image and language, spirit and material; role of motion, pressure and gesture; disorder and disruption of conventional meaning-making; limits of language to articulate the human experience; and musings on gender roles, sexuality, and love.

There’s a refreshing candour to Copithorne’s work that invites intimacy and connection. Her work reflects an interest in not hiding doubts, in respecting the need to start over. She engages with the beauty of the natural world, while questioning social hierarchies and political games. She writes with delight, humour, contemplation, and defiance.

Poem-drawings and hybrid-work demonstrate her early use of verbal and visual combinations and her engagement with non-linearity. These works are hand-printed and thus take time to read, as some of the text is squeezed around drawings. Works such as “Albion’s Rose Blooms to Calypso Beat” demonstrate a transformation of the verbal into calligraphic shapes and lines, perhaps providing evidence of the evolution of her writing into visual poetry.

As Copithorne writes in “Brackets + Boundaries,” “letters + words embody / themselves, enter nerves, / neurons, energy, / cold fluid fire.” This energy is well-represented within all her work from poem-drawings to digital visual poetry to hand-printed diaries, stanza-based poems, and prose.

The book focuses on print publications rather than digital, which is understandable, but much of Copithorne’s contemporary practice, like many women making art and visual poetry today, is posted on Facebook or Flickr, and much of it has been made in colour for the past several years. Another Order contains colour visual poems from Phases/Phrases, which give a flavour of how Copithorne uses colour intuitively, with palettes creating a tone that informs the text, for example. I’d like to see a volume two of her selected works that focuses on the digital work that has been published online.

Another Order is full of gems, including fascinating backmatter, such as her interview with Gary Barwin about her visual poetry and a checklist of Vancouver literary activities from the 1960s. The entire work is a treasure trove that invites rereading.

Bios

Amanda Earl

Amanda Earl (she/her) lives on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Peoples. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca and editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Beast Body Epic was long-listed for the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award. Earl is an inductee of the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour. She is grateful for funding from the City of Ottawa for her work-in-progress, Winter, collected. Subscribe to Amanda Thru the Looking Glass for updates on readings, publications and more. AmandaEarl.com

Talon Books