Folded Oceans by Foster Gareau

if you want to find out who your friends are,
t’as deux choix:
throw a party
or go to the emergency room.
–From “Afterparty”

With twenty-nine pages of ornate musings, fluid franglais, and a metaphoric math that evens out nicely, it isn’t difficult to see why Foster Gareau’s debut from Cactus Press was shortlisted for the 2025 Vallum Chapbook Award. A prolific French-Canadian poet with publications across an impressive landscape of Canadian literary magazines, Gareau possesses a rare gift for pithy truths and sophisticated turns of phrase that render ordinary language into a work of art.

…I listen close,
because I am forever wanting to know
how it feels to be someone else. You
are who I’m pretending to be. The sum
of layered conversation sounds
like roofbeams collapsing, tangled,
in barn fire. This hot tune repeats
as if the record is scratched,
a toy, broken.
–From “Partial Whole”

In addition to its novel spin on confessional poetry, the physicality of Folded Oceans places an interlude poem: “[sucking one’s teeth]” among the metal teeth of the chapbook’s staples while playing with lineation on a stroll down the aisle, among library shelves:

One title rings a bell
                                                                                       another rings a symphony.

Thus, the truest experience of Folded Oceans entails reading an analog copy of the chapbook since the words can only be properly unfurled from the physical fold of the page.

Within subtitles, a conceptual fluidity is captured while an anchoring role is fulfilled across a trilogy of “Fold” poems, exploring elements of [paper], [linen], and [water] with the latter as a most recurrent theme (hence the collection’s namesake).

Two bodies make
weather
Lover signals lover
Like syncopated taps on tiled walls
–From “Fold III [water]”

Epigraphs from a few queer greats imbue selected poems with greater depth: the words of Joseph Kramer and Jean Genet, as well as a reference to Sappho via Anne Carson. An epigraph from Ukrainian icon Taras Shevchenko also appears in Gareau’s poem “баба Luba of Mina Guazú”, which explores a unique, hiding-in-plain-sight subtext of Ukrainian-Paraguyan culture.

Ekphrastic tributes are also made to Edvard Munch’s Mélancolie III and Georges Delerue’s «Le Mépris», adding to the respective poems’ wistful musicality. Ebbs and flows of confession land as well in the most poignant of places, or rather ‘placeless-nesses’, much like the displacement of thought (perhaps paper), identity (maybe linen), and water (definitely water); so often water, with its various iterations, and its opposite of fire appears.

nobody dies from benumbment
but multitudes perish. how many folded
oceans lapped at our bed skirts while we lay
wax clotting, undressed together. I, naked.

him, nude.
–From “Sweetbitter Withness or [watching the flame]”

An eclectic cohesion of self-discovery and reflection unfolds smoothly, not quite meandering, but measured and expansive. The act of wandering is claimed with the refreshing self-possession of a poet who approaches adverse circumstances with curiosity and a sense of adventure.

An overall robust–yet conversational and down-to-earth–collection, Folded Oceans is a most unique poetic journey, like catching up with a friend over a glass of something you choose for its good taste.

Brooke Lee

Brooke Lee (she/her) is a freelance writer and editor in Montreal who writes fiction under the pen name River Lee. For more info, visit her website at riverleewriter.ca.

• Brooke Lee

  https://miramichireader.ca/author/brooke-lee/

  

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