Disturbing the Buddha by Barry Dempster

Disturbing the Buddha, Barry Dempster’s fifteenth collection, is disarmingly conversational and, like the best conversations, it moves between reverence and irreverence, sincerity and irony as it grapples with love, loss, loneliness and simple lack of luck — the “three-leaf clovers” so much more plentiful than the four. Dempster’s wit and playful metaphoric turns let us take for granted the courage needed to admit to life’s ongoing intensities, disruptions, and indignities. In these poems, a forty-year-old man dons a pink plastic crown on his niece’s order; a solitary man watches a Nicole Kidman rom-com with his cat; an aging Aphrodite, more mortal than god, suffers hot flashes. Like the mystic poets he addresses in the book’s final section, Dempster respects the unknown as he comes to terms with the ups and downs of the all-too-human condition.

Shifting effortlessly from light-hearted ode to solemn elegy, Dempster offers no touch-up jobs; instead we find a love of the flaw, a generosity toward it even as he exposes it. This is a poetry of inclusiveness, engaging both our better and worse angels, baring its Achilles’ heel and trusting us to do likewise.

Praise for Disturbing the Buddha: 

“Disturbing the Buddha, offers a highly polished window into the complex and rich story that mirrors the author’s inner life. The language is fresh, veering from simple facts to the magical. Through lineation and the careful use of metaphor Dempster creates poems of deceptive simplicity. He ranges over the gamut of tender feelings to asking questions about the unanswerable. This collection is one that can be savoured each time you dip into a poem, which both surprises and enchants. Disturbing the Buddha is about the human condition told through the deftly crafted words and phrases of a writer in his prime.” — Jurors’ comments 2017 Raymond Souster Award

Press Coverage: 

In Still Water — Canadian Literature