Low Water Slack - Softcover

Bowling, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889711615 ISBN 13: 9780889711617

Publisher: Nightwood Editions, 1995

Synopsis

In the language of the Fraser River fishermen, "low water slack" is that particular tide when everything slows down: the wind, the river, even the human heartbeat. It is a time to reflect, to count the stars in Orion's belt, to listen for the slow creak of the heron's wings. During low water slack, the challenges of life on the river give way to something much deeper, and the fishermen find themselves in a world so calm and beautiful that the very water beneath them seems a hushed breath.

At once historical and intensely personal, Low Water Slack takes the reader into a vibrant world populated with such characters as a ghost of a nineteeth-century salmon canner and an 800-pound white sturgeon. Here are infamous moments of BC's past (the Hell's Gate disaster, the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War Two) alongside childhood memories of a first kiss and meditations on the future of West Coast fish stocks. And moving like a quick shadow throughout is the Pacific salmon itself, whose life cycle mirrors and guides the poet's own exploration of mortality.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Bowling has published numerous poetry collections, including Low Water Slack; Dying Scarlet (winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry); Darkness and Silence (winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry); The Witness Ghost and The Memory Orchard (both nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award); and his Selected Poems (winner of the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize). Bowling's work in poetry and prose has been honoured with two Canadian Authors Association Awards; two Writers Trust of Canada nominations; a Guggenheim Fellowship; five Alberta Book Awards; the Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Award; and a Roderick Haig Brown Award nomination. Bowling served as the 2015 Canadian judge for the Griffin International Poetry Prize.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Smokehouse

My first real kiss tasted of burnt chinook
and cherrywood. I won it in a smokehouse
on the banks of the Fraser River, cica 1975.
When I stepped out of that narrow darkness,
the scent of summer's spent desire on my skin,
October threw my shadow farther than I'd ever
thrown a stone; I could not see the far bank
of my own body, I could not hear my senses
splash on the other side. Along the fence,
the tall corn whispered secrets, and a cat's
eyes swallowed a robin whose heart thrummed
thunder from a distant rooftop. Was another
shadow running an arm to soreness in the grass?
I did not look. My eyes had dropped like stones
into the river, and the current pulled them deep.
Soemwhere up the valley, wind flayed the flesh
of salmon hung in the rocks, dried it to ribbons
pink enough for a schoolgirl's hair. Tongues
would tease it for flavour in another season,
and go silent in the tasting. But that day,
the clouds poured east in a rich smoke, faster
and faster, hunger of the earth for heaven,
hunger of the air for blood, hunger of the blood
for burning. Now, I stay my arm to listen.
These words step out of a high dark,
and there's fury in their swimming.



Steelhead, Spawning

What we dreamed of when young, but never found
comes in with the tide tonight. What we loved,
but lacked the will to pursue, moves swiftly
in the mouth. Beautiful ghost, blushing
in the gills, the saltmarsh sighs to see
your rare body beacon the night. What have
we done to yesterday? The river flexes its
last wild muscle, strong and sure. Casts
its bright hook in our sleep, and pulls.
While we rise to the unbreathable element
of loss again.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nightwood Editions
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889711615
• ISBN 13: 9780889711617
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80