{"id":10672,"date":"2020-01-12T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/near-miss-laura-matwichuk\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T01:32:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T20:32:36","slug":"near-miss-laura-matwichuk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/near-miss-laura-matwichuk\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitting the Mark: Near Miss<\/em> by Laura Matwichuk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The book is prefaced with a poem entitled \u201cDream: Three hundred and seventeen years\u201d in which the author travels from the year 1700 onward, framed by the luscious Vancouver land and seascape, attempting to make contact with someone she can\u2019t quite reach with beautifully crafted results:<\/p>\n

1949 Bedrock-mounted seismometers fumble,
<\/em> etch secret messages from Haida Gwaii
<\/em> on photographic paper.
<\/em> Did you see me, sailing a crooked boat
<\/em> across the sea?<\/em><\/p>\n

2012 The sea salivates bad feelings,
<\/em> horizontal strain,
<\/em> unbearable lithosphere load.
<\/em> I don\u2019t care.
<\/em> Worrying about the end has aged me.
<\/em> It\u2019s been three hundred and seventeen years since we last spoke.<\/em><\/p>\n

The rest of the book is laid out into three sections: \u201cINSOMNIA,\u201d \u201cINTERIOR,\u201d and \u201cINFERNO,\u201d interspersed with poems in italics. These italicized poems give pause, adding a breath between the others, but are actually more often the focal point in relation to the title of the book. The poems and titles underscore a feeling of trepidation regarding air travel, satellites, dreams, mountains and the obsolescence of the written word, and according to the \u201cNotes\u201d section of the book, these italicized works are all erasure poems.<\/p>\n

The poems in between the italicized poems speak to the everyday miracles of various relationships which thread between people, things and places both at home and afar, which creates an intriguing sort of symbiotic contrast between the three. <\/p>\n

In \u201cFuji, Baby,\u201d Matwichuk juxtaposes a trip to Fuji with recounting the story of the author giving birth, weaving in picturesque parallels between birds and mothers, inner child and fetus, home and away:<\/p>\n

<\/em>You place an iPod beside the hospital
<\/em>Bathtub and Apollo drowns out my screams.<\/p>\n

<\/em>I see stars. Fly to Japan. Leave Earth\u2019s
<\/em>Atmosphere in a nitrous-fuelled rocket ship.<\/p>\n

Then, another pause, another breath with a one liner poem of the same name: \u201cWhen was the last time you slept?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Derrida buttering toast, Theremin practice, the buzz of midnight\u2014Matwichuk\u2019s poems each have their own unique hook, often with philosophical imagery which draws the reader in and onward to the next page. For example, in \u201cHere Comes the Future\u201d (from the second section \u201cINTERIOR\u201d) the author writes \u201cI confess to my therapist about the origin \/ of a stain on the carpet of my childhood home.\u201d What is the significance of a memory of a stain on a carpet in a childhood home so that it is worth mentioning to a therapist? Who is doing the psychoanalyzing? Is it a comment on how, often, the most trivial things have the deepest impact on one\u2019s psyche?<\/p>\n

The third and final section, \u201cINFERNO,\u201d is named after a poem of the same name that uses the obvious reference to Dante\u2019s \u201cInferno\u201d as a driver for a dream about volcanoes, a different kind of fiery scene from the recesses of Earth as well as a real-life robot named Dante who explored a volcano in the Antarctic.<\/p>\n

Three poems towards the end of the book open with definitions of different codes on The Torino Scale (\u201ca method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with near-Earth objects [NEOs] such as asteroids and comets,\u201d according to Wikipedia). An epigraph to the title poem, borrowed from the NASA website, explains: \u201cMeriting Attention by Astronomers (Yellow): A discovery \u2026 of an object making a somewhat close but not highly unusual pass near the Earth.\u201d Matwichuk elaborates on what \u201cyellow\u201d on the Torino Scale means to the casual observer:<\/p>\n

<\/em>1,056 close-Earth approaches since 1900.
<\/em>Somewhat close, we\u2019re told, is not cause for alarm.
<\/em>Yellow is neutral: beyond our control,
<\/em>but not worrisome.<\/p>\n

Matiwichuk expertly captures everyday catastrophes and missed chances in a simultaneously affectionate yet matter of fact fashion. This is a book you will not want to put down. In short, Near Miss<\/em> hits the mark.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Shortlisted for the 2016 bpNichol Award and winner of the 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, Marilyn Irwin\u2019s<\/strong> work has been published by Apt. 9 Press, Arc Poetry Magazine, bywords.ca<\/a>, Hussy Press, Puddles of Sky, and The Steel Chisel, among others. the day the moon went away is her ninth chapbook. She runs shreeking violet press in Ottawa. <\/p>\n

ARC<\/a> HITS THE HEART HARD.
<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any book that opens with a quotation by Joy Division is probably worth investigating and Near Miss<\/em> is no exception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10439,10569,10279,10408","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1716,1764],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[202],"issue":[72],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3131],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}