A Walker in the City

By Méira Cook

Shortlisted for the 2012 Aqua Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

A fascinating, ambling, loitering mystery story in verse, a whoizzit rather than a whodunit.

In this innovative and arresting narrative poem, Méira Cook's walker, a young woman, is a character being written by an "old city poet," who is in turn being written by another poet, for whom the young woman, "Ms. Em Cook," has been an amanuensis. Always witty and often hilarious, feather-light in touch, the book is an entertaining exploration of serious issues: youth and age; life, death and rebirth; the (dis)connection of language and reality; tradition and the now. It is an assemblage of seven nesting sections, each of them a sort of chapbook speaking to each of the others and rounding out a long poem of great freshness. A Walker in the City is one of a kind, one of the most original books Brick has ever published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Sep 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781771310994

Méira Cook

Méira Cook was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1964, received her PhD in Canadian literature from the University of Manitoba, and has recently completed a two-year term as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. She has published poetry, criticism, a novel and, in 2005, Writing Lovers: Reading Canadian Love Poetry by Women. She has taught creative writing in high schools, literature at university, and has worked as a freelance film and arts reviewer and editor. She lives in Winnipeg.

Book preview

A WALKER IN THE CITY

A WALKER IN THE CITY

Méira Cook

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Cook, Méira, 1964-

A walker in the city / Méira Cook.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-926829-72-2

I. Title.

PS8555.O567W35 2011         C811’.54         C2011-904257-6

Copyright © Méira Cook, 2011

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

Cover design by Cheryl Dipede.

The author photo was taken by Mark Libin.

Brick Books

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

For my loves —

Mark and Shoshana

and

Misha and Shai

Contents

A Walker in the City

The Beautiful Assassin: A Poem Noir

Being Dead

Posthumous

Appendix A: The Keyhole Poems

Appendix B: Follow Me

Last Poems

Acknowledgements

Biographical Note

A Walker in the City

Where to send her, this walker?

Go little mine book. She sets off

coat swinging wide. Stars

in her wake and moons in theirs

collide.

— from Loitering With Intent

by F. Kulperstein

Astringent day in early winter

when all the angels have been let out

of their cages. The wet blue beak

of morning, sky skidding on ahead

or flying — the sky — flying laundry.

Shunting cirrus back and forth (sky)

swerving its tracks boing-boing,

rubber as a ball highing

the bluest bit of hush at the centre

of a jaunty girl’s jaunty eye.

Callooh! Callay! arias she out (but soft

away). Then, shining all

and sure, vaults she the wind’s

cathedral, stamping booted feet,

lifting a hand unmittened, yes,

the better to balance welterweight

wind (flying fists) on a wet fingertip.

Hello again, hello. It’s me (it’s only me).

City bristlin’ gloves today, handless,

cut off at the wrist. That’s

supplication at best, at worst

the bait ’n grab of a supple leather

up-yours beneath her seat on the no.18

uptown. As blue as that mitten

flash-frozen into prayer on this morning’s

path. Yes, gloves gathering

in all the world’s soiled places

where she’s too long stared

herself down. Dear termagant,

like all collectors despairing

the end of the collection. Left

hand to match bleating calfskin

(no. 5 ½) or missing hand-

combed angora in damson

& plush. Brisk brisk, a walker

in the