THIS TREMOR LOVE IS
by Daphne Marlatt
Talonbooks, 112 pp.
WINTER/RICE/TEA STRAIN
for Roy Kiyooka by Daphne Marlatt"
(M)othertongue Press, 5 pp.
As an aside to Daphne Marlatt's most recent book, This Tremor Love Is, is her previous release, Winter / Rice / Tea Strain, from Salt Spring Island's (M)othertongue Press. The entirety of Winter / Rice / Tea Strain is included in This Tremor Love Is, but (M)othertongue’s presentation reveals the patient calm of the poems and the possible beauty of book art as publishing.
Winter / Rice / Tea Strain consists solely of four pages of fine paper in alternating blueberry and sage colour. Each poem is letterpressed and then constructed as part of a "fold-out sculptured piece," and the cover has been handprinted with a handcarved lino-cut print. The cost of this signed and numbered limited edition of 80 copies can be prohibitive ($95 per copy), but it is an incredible example of thoughtful and well-considered bookmaking.
The entire book is dedicated to Marlatt's former partner, Roy Kiyooka, as a meditation on their time together. With all the attention to bookmaking and presentation, reading the four poems becomes intensely personal – an invasion of the spaces created between a couple.
The presentation of Winter / Rice / Tea Strain in the Talonbooks publication of This Tremor Love Is is typical for Talonbooks and many publishers – a rather pedestrian form with what appears to be little consideration of the behaviour of the page and the book on the poems themselves. After reading Winter / Rice / Tea Strain, This Tremor Love Is is a shallow presentation of some very resonant poems. Talon has used the same design for all of their books of poetry for the last several years – a horizontal division between image and text – and this does create a distinctive look, but in my opinion doesn't do anything for the poetry within.
This Tremor Love Is is Marlatt's mapping of a lifetime of relationships and loves – literary and physical growing out of the "lost book" of her period with Kiyooka right up to the present. The danger with such a collection is that it can degenerate into an overly nostalgic, overly fond remembrance. There is no rose-coloured love here, but rather an intelligent approach to the personal and the poetic.
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