Shelley A. Leedahl is the author of thirteen books in various genres. A decade ago she wrote a memoir in essays, I Wasn’t Always Like This. She has done short stories, children’s books, and four poetry collections, some in multiple printings since 1990. In Go, Shelley A. Leedahl somehow mixes the best ratio of acknowledging muff-ups and small griefs, isolation and loss with a scintillating report of loving life. As she says in “Thanksgiving, 2020”, “there’s a dollop of honey in most days.” She is not Pippy Longstockings but real, frank, and offering bouquets of yesses.
Real, frank, and offering bouquets of yesses.
The collection is sorted into seven sections. From the title alone you can tell it is alert poetry, skilled at a turn of phrase. My copy was quite highlighted with delight of these though the text. But a sample for you. These are the section titles: “So Much I Don’t Know about U-Hauls”, “Stalking Windows as the Story Develops”, “The Ocean Will Do That”, “I Wait for an Epiphany and Don’t Expect a Bright Light”, “What I Like About You”, “Forget the Old Arguments”, and “Manitoulin Suite”.
Not all of her poem titles are as sparkly, although a few promise shiny new point of views like these. “The Pantry of All There Is” is proof of a rather addictive love of bright sound:
you are kneeling
in the sodden garden, a penitent
among chickweed and fine boas of asparagus,
mud-clots glommed to your cuffs
Beyond the graphic image of being bowed in a wet garden, you have this vivid re-casting of asparagus as campy feather boas. I myself have a secret love affair with the word “glommed” and it chimes so nicely with “sodden” and “cuffs.” Beyond that stanza there is a girl who “believed in edges” but grew up to discover she knew “less than a slug”. It becomes a humbling scene, analogous to Jesus in Gethsemane scene of reduction from where you thought you were in the world to where you are, an encapsulating of a coming of age moment. I don’t think I am the one bringing and imagining the religious allegory. The two-page poem ends,
Lady of filthy fingernails,
your trowel's gone missing again,
swallowed by soil or the goutweed
you slice away
with fundamentalist persistence.
“Lady of ___” connotes a Catholic prayer. The dirty nails suggest a digging self out of a grave, not just trowel but self buried but able by patient work to resurrect self.
I realize I’m at risk of doing a review on one poem rather than the work. ex pede Herculem. From the measure of Hercules foot, you will know the whole. I wouldn’t want you to misconstrue the thrust. There is grief but it is not sad poetry. “As Twelve years dissolve like salt in water” suggests it is salt water under the bridge. It is not a pious poetry but a poetry of feeling capable and self-reliant. The title is pointedly not “Went”, but an instruction to keep moving forward. It swirls the heady mixed drink of resiliency.
The title is pointedly not “Went”, but an instruction to keep moving forward. It swirls the heady mixed drink of resiliency.
Leedahl has an eye for details. In her house-for-sale poem, the inventory is uncommon, “Ticks like snaps on my skin/in the night” make my skin sympathetically crawl with the sound of snap of the exoskeleton crushed. She uses further sound-skill to bring it to a sense of closure with the iambic drift (or drip) towards closure with “farewell dripping eavestrough.”
As Australian writer Dzintra Sullivan put it, “with goodbyes you also get hellos”, Leedahl’s poetry has a reach for buoyancy and joy. In the 3rd last section, “I Wait for an Epiphany and Don’t Expect a Bright Light”, the travel poems cover this relatable vignette:
Hello, cobblestones. Hello medieval steps
and fortifications, stained glass
and gothic ramparts. How silly I feel
feeling anything but reverence
in the presence of Réfous Tower,
standing since 1271.
This is my first castle, my partner whispers
in boy-voice, and I soften,
but it's too late
to lower the drawbridge between us.
And there you have almost the whole range of human emotions and yet it feels like a natural flow. I love “boy-voice.” The whole relationship is there within the object, reaction, reaction to reaction and the object becomes a metaphor. The inclusion of dialogue grounds poems, moors them from going too close to the abstract and distant. The emotional tone can be simply expressed with verve without veering into expository territory. It can be hard to do this without jerking the wheel prosaic.
It can be hard to give set phrases without seeming telling yet she pulls it off. Just look at a stanza in the “Manatoulin Suite”:
You kiss me with your wet mouth
and I don’t give a damn about the sun
making me even older
That last line of the stanza deepens the poem’s complexity. Later-life relationships and their fragile second-chances is grabbed with both hands on the ears. The ephemerality of life is cherished, as a hallmark of the collection.
If one of the goals of poetry is to share a world new to a reader, and another to say it fresh, she does both ably. In “Saskatchewan House,” “The coffee cup’s heat,/ a small, still pet/ within the parentheses/of restless hands” begs to be read aloud, as does the whole work. On first reading I wasn’t sure about the book, but there’s a speed of metaphor comparable to Deepfake Serenade by Chris Banks. Turns in Go are like Banks’ not predictable and do pique curiosity: “Three of us stood beside your open coffin—/grim bridesmaids—“ or in “Let us”: “appreciate good acoustics/ in narrow stairwells”. You never know where a poem of hers may go but can trust it will be somewhere made interesting by her eye selecting.
Shelley A. Leedahl is the author of thirteen books, including four previous poetry collections; an adult and a juvenile novel; short story collections; creative nonfiction; and the illustrated children’s books The Bone Talker and The Moon Watched It All. She also writes for commercial markets, worked as a radio advertising copywriter in AB and SK, and writes dozens of book reviews annually. Leedahl has been awarded International Fellowships for prestigious artist residencies in the US, Mexico, Spain, and Scotland. She presents across the country. In 2020 she received a Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Originals Grant for her literary and musical podcast “Something Like Love”. Shelley lives in Ladysmith, BC, and is often on hiking trails or in her kayak.
Publisher: Radiant Press (April 2022)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ | 94 pages
ISBN: 9781989274675
Pearl Pirie's WriteBulb is now available at the Apple store. A prompt app for iOS 15 and up gives writing achievement badges. Pirie’s 4th poetry collection was footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021), minimalist poems, won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. Forthcoming chapbooks from Catkin Press and Turret House. Find more at www.pearlpirie.com or at patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet