So a couple weeks into poetry 510 and I learn from a classmate that she has a collection of poems entitled Sumac’s Red Arms. I ask her for a copy and the next week, I’m holding a lovely book in my hands. The poems are the fruition of ten years working on the white page and over eighteen years working in the cold, white north of Canada where Karen Shklanka practiced rural and emergency medicine. Sumac’s Red Arms sutures the experience of living in various degrees of remoteness and intimacy with a straightforward lyricism that resuscitates poetry out of prose. For anyone dissatisfied with the always cursory news coverage of the latest tragedy in some rural community, here’s an opportunity to understand some corner of a small town from a more personal perspective. What’s even more intriguing about Sumac’s Red Arms is that we’re taken from the isolation of the North to the warmth of the Mediterranean along with several other stops in between.
So, yes, I feel pretty lucky to be in poetry 510.
I’m looking forward to finding out more about my other classmates’ and the poetry they’ve also put into the world.
