“the bridge”: Experimental Review of “Manifest” by Terese Mason Pierre and “The Pink of the Seams” by Sanna Wani
Terese Mason Pierre, Manifest
Gap Riot Press, 2020. $10 CAD.
Order a copy from Gap Riot Press
While residing in the speculative world of Terese Mason Pierre's Manifest, my mind was beckoned towards the space created in another one of my favourite chapbooks, Sanna Wani's The Pink of the Seams.
The spaces where these chapbooks live felt instantly connected for me, in a way that is intangible, but hopefully explicable, in the logic of poetry. I wrote this poem borrowing and knitting language from the books themselves to try draw a footpath between clouds, over mountains. This poem is an attempt to paint lines from one author's flight path to the other's, to create a dotted line you can follow towards escape. The wings crafted from each of these books take us to connected worlds. In my mind, these worlds are part of a tight-knit community. Here is my sketch of it.
Experimental review of “Manifest” by Terese Mason Pierre and “The Pink of the Seams” by Sanna Wani by Conyer Clayton
Read the plain-text version of “the bridge.”
the bridge
by Conyer Clayton
Earth-shook
mortality
communed in touch
Intimacy
is a reach
through time
The body
real the body
unreal the body made
real
in dissipation, or wholeness
escaped or desire,
please, be tender, touch yourself
self-made into a skyline
Flight could be a future freedom
or, a path to
transformation
reclamation
recreation.
Weather a body
in new lands
Age a body in old
but still, there is new
air, floating to
Mountains future
mountains past
carefree flight
Admit it
Promise
The Earth was black
and tender
and nothing
to be afraid of
Not unlike
digging into the soft ground
of our own flesh, burying
time, recreating
pain, mapping
possibility
Sanna Wani, The Pink of the Seams
Penrose Press, 2019. $20 CAD (sold out)
Text sources
From Manifest by Terese Mason Pierre
"We Watch the Sun Die"
"Flight"
"Manifest"
"Aliens Visit the Caribbean"
"A New Face"
"Fortune Teller"
From The Pink of the Seams by Sanna Wani
“Pink (Palpitations)"
"Morningstar"
"Take Care of Your Toes"
“Traverser"
"The Earth is Soft"
Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa-based artist and gymnastics coach, originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She has 2 albums and 7 chapbooks, including Sprawl, the time it took us to forget, written collaboratively with Manahil Bandukwala (Collusion Books, Fall 2020). She is the winner of Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize and The Capilano Review's 2019 Robin Blaser Poetry Contest, and is a member of the creative collective VII. Her debut full-length collection of poetry is We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020).