Tell - poems for a girlhood - Soraya Peerbaye (Pedlar Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Tell - poems for a girlhood.  Soraya Peerbaye.  Pedlar Press.  St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.  2015.

Young men do terrible things all the time, we see it on the television news every night, we are frequently shocked by new levels of horror but ultimately we've given up the pretense of being surprised.  We know evil lurks in anticipation.

But when young women do terrible things it genuinely upsets whatever karmic balance we delicately hold on to.  It troubles our inner ear, makes us stumble, slur.

Soraya Peerbaye's Tell - poems for a girlhood reenvisions the horrible death of Reena Virk.  Virk, a young teenage girl was murdered by a gang of peers, mostly other girls, in November of 1997 in Saanich, British Columbia.

See them say

Mistrials,

overturned verdicts.

Transcripts of earlier testimony

placed before the witness,

past and present overlaid

like vellum, the defence

cross-examining each

falsehood, each fault or failure

of memory, I was tricked, said one.

On the stand they were always

thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

The boy who was Warren's friend,

diagnosed with post-traumatic stress

disorder; the girl who testified

to seeing Kelly and Warren

cross the bridge together,

dead at seventeen, heart failure.

Then she was only a recording,

a click, a lick of ribbon,

a hiss of white noise.

Voir-dire. See, say,

to see them say, say

what is true. Warren said

he and Kelly made a pact,

that he'd say he beat up a Native

for calling her a hootchie.

The year he recanted he traced

Metis lines in his cheekbones,

asked to be transferred

to Kwikwexwelhp Healing Village.

I remind you, witness,

that you are still under oath.

Offered a glass of water

when they wept. They drank

without thirst, without lowering their eyes.

Kelly shouted in the courtroom

at the prosecutor:

- You can say anything you want

but everything that comes out of your mouth

is going to be wrong.

                    - What did you say? asked the Crown.

- What is coming out of your mouth -

what you are saying -

                     everything that comes out of

                                     your mouth -

...

Heather Spears tackledanced through this territory in 2000, immediately after the first trial, with Required Reading/A witness in words and drawings to the Reena Virk Trials 1998-2000 (Wolsak and Wynn, 2000).  Spears' book is a serious lament and compelling read.  Soraya Peerbaye is from the same school of unadorned and emotionally controlled narrative and it makes for a riveting engagement.

Peerbaye knows a metronome of reason and persistent inquiry will bring us closer to the truth than hysterical anger and rage.

Craigflower Bridge

          Get up.

A bridge is wood trestle below, metal

above; a guardrail

of teal-green lattice. Hennaed patches of rust.

"I need help. I need help. I need help."

A bridge is a distance, measured in steps, in pools

of lamplight, the time it takes to cross.

In breaths. - How far did you watch her go?

- Halfway across, to where the light spreads out.

Headlights of passing cars, bright beads on a wire

that curves into darkness: Highway 1A, Gorge Road.

- Did you observe her gait as she crossed?

I thought of the gaits of Indian dance,

the little I learned, carrying

my clumsiness far into adulthood:

elephant, peacock, deer. - She was

staggering, light-headed.

A bridge is held up by belief that you will go

over to the other shore

to someone who wants you, to somewhere

safe.

...

The truth of a thing is never known the same way by two different people.  Several trials and the best efforts of justice have never seen one answer, one solution, one truth.  Sometimes poetry can help fill that gap and Peerbaye's intense gaze aims to do just that.

Tell - poems for a girlhood carries a quiet sense of dread, the weight of a murdered young woman and the murky dance of fractured memory.

We knew going in that Tell - poems for a girlhood was not going to have a happy ending but Peerbaye and her intelligent diligence kept us turning pages for a story we already knew.  Books of poetry don't get much sadder that this one.

Curfew

Was time important to you that night?

Yes, they said.

Did you abide by a curfew? Ten o'clock,

eleven, midnight.

Who greeted you? Mothers who kissed

their daughters goodnight, mothers who checked

their daughters' breath.

Who greeted you? No mothers; girls signed their names

in the register, and women who were not their mothers

initialed the time.

How long did it last? A moment.

How long is a moment?

How long did it last? the Crown asked Warren.

- I don't know. - How long did it feel like? - Forever.

How long does it take to walk across the bridge?

How long does it take to walk home?

I'm fucked. I'm fucked for the rest of my life. Warren,

overheard crying to his father, the night of his arrest.

The tidal chart entered as an exhibit, indicating the time lapse

between high waters and low waters.

I don't remember. It was so long ago, Kelly repeated,

a monotone. Her second trial. At her third, she fell silent.

How old the Gorge, how old the middens. All carbon-14 dates

have probability errors, as atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons

changed radiocarbon amounts in the natural world.

How long the trials. Twelve years.

How long did you look back?

I remember

being fifteen, lying on my best friend's bed, listening

to Forever Young by Alphaville.  How badly I wanted a boy

to slow dance that song with.

...

Soraya Peerbaye's Tell- poems for a girlhood won the 2016 Trillium Poetry Award and is nominated for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize.  That's some pretty high cotton.  

The staff here at Today's book of poetry had a rather sombre reading this morning.  Reverent and quiet.  Not all pleasures are joys.

Soraya Peerbaye

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Soraya Peerbaye’s first collection of poetry, Poems for the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her poems have appeared in Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Women Poets (2004), edited by Priscila Uppal and Rishma Dunlop, as well as the literary journals Other Voices, Prairie Fire and The New Quarterly; she has also contributed to the chapbook anthology Translating Horses. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Peerbaye lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter.

BLURB

Peerbaye's new work tells a haunting story of girlhood, one we wish could be untold or exchanged for one that powerfully honours the colour of our skin. Still, these poems placate our loss with their clear-eyed intelligence and depth.

     - Natasha Bakht

Soraya Peerbaye

"Rainfall"

video: Q at CBC

pedlarpress.com

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