Bookworm, no. 48
David Venn on Nova Scotia folk art. Caroline Noël reviews poetry by Kelsey Borgford and Cole Forrest. Robert Lewis’s days at “Time” magazine. Original verse from Kat Cameron. Inside the June issue.
You’ve Got Art
Through Rain, Sleet or Snow: Rural Mailboxes of Nova Scotia
Vernon Oickle
SSP Publications
152 pages, softcover
Nova Scotia Folk Art: An Illustrated Guide
Ray Cronin
Nimbus
144 pages, softcover and ebook
Between 2015 and 2023, Vernon Oickle travelled Nova Scotia in search of unique mailboxes that held “artistic, cultural or historical relevance.” He includes photographs of no less than 150 of them in his delightful Through Rain, Sleet or Snow. Some are as simple as a replica tractor in Jordan Branch or an old white microwave in Feltzen South. Others are as inventive as a Chevrolet transmission in Aylesford or a rusted bicycle in Hubbards. A few are as funny as Santa Claus driving a Bentley Zamboni in North Alton or a slot labelled “taxes” too high to reach in Church Point. All of these mailboxes fit within a charming subset of folk art. As Ray Cronin, a curator at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, in Fredericton, writes in the book’s foreword, “The objects were made for their own aesthetic reasons, not to please or attract an audience.” Yet they manage this too.
Cronin expands on that definition in Nova Scotia Folk Art, his own enriching book, which profiles fifty sculptors, painters, and designers who came into prominence over the past century—often without formal training. He categorizes these artists by first, second, and third waves, from Maud Lewis to Harold Cromwell and, later, Barry Colpitts. And he features significant pieces throughout, among them fanciful hooked rugs and quaint, brightly coloured paintings.
While Oickle takes a somewhat journalistic approach, interviewing at least eighteen craftspeople and their family members, Cronin writes more like a historian, profiling artists and exploring their most “superlative examples.” Both authors present their subjects with ingenuity, humility, and respect. According to Oickle, as centralized mail delivery comes into widespread use, these “uniquely Canadian pieces of folk art are destined to become obsolete.” Meanwhile, Cronin observes that the overall quality of the form has declined since its inception. But the artistic efforts showcased here may lead readers to a different conclusion: surely, resourceful Nova Scotians will find a way to keep the grassroots artisanship alive.
—David Venn
Where There’s Smoke
Once the Smudge Is Lit
Kelsey Borgford and Cole Forrest; illustrated by Tessa Pizzale
Kegedonce Press
66 pages, softcover
With understated yet frank verse, Kelsey Borgford and Cole Forrest’s Once the Smudge Is Lit transports readers to Nipissing, Ontario. The collaborative poetry collection centres on ceremonies and the authors’ Indigeneity as foundational to their creative expression.
Borgford’s intimate poems spotlight communal events: powwows, boat rides, and funerals. The twenty-three-year-old Nishnaabekwe builds a holistic connection between the environment and her community; porcupines, bears, moose, and other northern animals make appearances, often metaphorically. In “Pretendian,” she illustrates how heritage, not imitation, determines identity: “human is not bear / because bear learned from mother bear, and grandmother bear / and ancestor bear / and human learned from watching bear.” Cole Forrest, meanwhile, contrasts prevalent technologies with generational practices, whether depicting subreddits or pickerel fishing with family. “There’s something so post-modern,” the Ojibwe poet explains, “about being a chronically online n8tve / that doesn’t want to show their face but would open a portal to the / cosmos just to look the creator / in the face.” Elsewhere, portrayals of substance abuse and domestic violence are left uncensored, speaking to new and inherited trauma: “I don’t apologize for drinking / but I’m sorry my family is always drunk.”
Forrest’s and Borgford’s poems work in tandem to present a fuller perspective, one not limited to a single voice or gender. While Forrest ponders the enduring effects of residential schools and homelessness, Borgford explores Eurocentric beauty standards and the traditional practices survived by younger generations. The illustrator Tessa Pizzale’s simple pencil drawings of animals, faces, and stars further animate the collection. Just as her wandering smoke from the smudge spreads across the pages, so do these young poets’ dreams and sorrows.
—Caroline Noël
From the Archives: Time Stamps
In the June issue, the long-time magazine reporter and editor Robert Lewis reflects on his days at Time throughout the 1960s and ’70s. The photo below was taken in June 1971, after the military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who faced charges of espionage and conspiracy in connection with the Pentagon Papers, turned himself in. He had leaked the documents to the New York Times and other outlets but not Time, explains Lewis (seen under the red arrow). “We were promised an interview later that day, but Ellsberg closed the door. It’s a long story.”
Less than a year later, Lewis encountered pushback from some senior editors, who wanted to spike his reporting about veterans “acting violently toward family and friends” after they returned home from Vietnam. When Lewis sent off a “vigorous rebuttal” to one such editor, the Saigon bureau chief Stanley Cloud, he received the following response.
For more on Robert Lewis and Time magazine, check out the latest issue of the Literary Review of Canada.
Poet’s Corner
Holualoa Ekahi
The stars are brighter here, an arc of flares—
ocean side obscured by Kailua’s glow.
The B&B perches on the hill, ferns
draped with spider webs like fake snow.
Gravel embeds in my flip-flops, staccato
rhythm stuttered by my toes.
Confused by false dawn in the coffee
trees, crimson roosters crow.
Orion somersaults across the sky,
above the full moon’s glow.
—Kat Cameron won a 2021 High Plains Book Award for Ghosts Still Linger. Find more of her work in a physical copy of the latest Literary Review of Canada, on newsstands now.
Inside the June Issue
“In my mind’s eye.” David Macfarlane reads a new translation of the Iliad.
“A compelling consideration of the layers of love.” Michelle Sinclair reviews Judith Pond’s The Signs of No.
“The literary historian who didn’t know his Bard.” Andrew Benjamin Bricker finally gets around to William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
And much more!