Winnipeg Free Press reviews Wide slumber for lepidopterists

Structure moves in, out of lucidity

By Alison Calder

Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (Coach House, 109 pages, $17), Toronto writer Angela Rawlings' first book, is a gorgeously produced little thing.

The poetry, structured through the dual trajectories of a moth's life cycle and the stages of sleep, moves in and out of lucidity. The writing has a dreamy, underwater quality that eludes the attempt to form a coherent narrative.

A brief sample shows the transition between sense and nonsense, here using backwards writing: "Place specimen under lamp to increase drying time/ tsniaga tsurht rotcelloc a#tilps#tips nehT/ a moth with barbed spines."

The poetry, divided into six sections, works through repetition and difference. The language's gradual move from relative clarity to breakdown and reformulation represents the contrasting motions of the dreaming mind and the moth's transformation from egg to specimen.

Patterns

Some of this poem cannot be read: the meaning comes through the patterns on the page. Likewise, the scientific language Rawlings uses estranges and absorbs the reader, functioning like her neologisms.

No page of this collection is typical of the whole, but it's fascinating to look at. Delicate illustrations by Matt Ceolin grace the pages.