Reviews

Let’s Go For A Walk

Claudia Casper
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…around Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park with Betsy Warland, AKA Oscar of Between, AKA The Human, founder of the SFU Writer’s Studio and Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, and the author of thirteen books. The miracle of Lost Lagoon / lost in thought: prose poems (Caitlin Press) is that although Warland does all the talking during this walk, you come away feeling like you’ve been closely listened to. By using the self-description “The Human” and avoiding the pronoun “I,” the author places herself as one among many inhabitants, one among many species, and relieves us of the insistence on self and identity. Unsurprisingly, in that openness, we feel ourselves more, not less, present. The Human’s experience of Lost Lagoon is accompanied by visions of poet E. Pauline Johnson, part Mohawk, part English, paddling at high tide when the water was part of the ocean. The Human wants us to read Johnson’s Legends of Vancouver, which sold 1, copies in 1911. The Human visits Lost Lagoon over five years. Rich in simplicity, Lost Lagoon’s 79 pages allow us to experience time rather than get through it. Meet the swans, beavers, otters, herons, crows, Canada geese, eagles, coots, the Swan Lady, the Beaver Lady, ducks, turtles, and “poorly sighted raccoons (who) stroke the ground for seeds with such sensitivity, as if they are reading braille.” By walk’s end you have shared five years of life in a place, five years of the life of a place. The lagoon becomes a body, adapting to its diminishment over time, surviving, providing ample respite in its arms, light rippling off its surface.

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