POETRY: Montreal's whisy damp permeates first collection

Reviewed by Ariel Gordon (Winnipeg Free Press, January 23, 2010)

Chris Hutchinson, who was born in Montreal but spent long enough in Vancouver for its whisky damp to permeate his first collection of poetry, is nothing if not consistent.

As that book, Unfamiliar Weather, ended with a poem that referenced Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, so his new collection Other People's Lives (Brick Books, 128 pages, $19), begins with one.

His sophomore effort also continues Unfamiliar Weather's extended abstract examinations of feelings and states of mind.

"Somewhere floats emptiness, / untwisted space, voluminous cavity // in the air which is the air not rushing anywhere -- / just stillness, hoving pure, suspended // like a word bubble where nothing is written."

Fortunately, Hutchinson's almost morbid self-awareness comes bundled with wit, intelligence and heart.

In the long poem sequence Cross-Sections, he writes:

"I admit / I arrived complaining. I had colic for a year. / On each sip of consciousness my stomach / swung on its hinge. But you were gone. / So I began to sing."

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Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book of poetry, Hump, will be published in April by Palimpsest Press.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/books/montreals-whisky-damp-permeates-first-collection-82486827.html

and http://janedayreader.blogspot.com/2010/01/montreals-whisky-damp-permeates-first.html