REVER CAROLAN

It’s a long way from Gastown to

Kyoto or Belur Math, but for a time
last month a sardine-can audience
was transported from The Classical
Joint on Carrall Street to those far off
climes, courtesy of the poetic magic of
Trevor Carolan.
The reading was on occasion of the
printing of Closing the Circle, Caro-
lan’s first book of poetry. A freelance
journalist here in Vancouver, Carolan
got his start at Douglas in 1974,
writing for the pre-Other Press stu-
dent newspaper. He had help on the
book from New York poet Allan Gins-
burg, whom he describes as ‘‘a bit of
amentor.”” ~

Carolan bases much of his writing
on his extensive travels in Europe and
Asia, including a twelve page nar-
rative poem on his comically unsuc-
cessful trip to visit the temples of
Belur Math, near Calcutta. These
pieces have a definite exotic appeal
and humor, but he is at his best
writing of his west coast home.

  
  

 

- Clever Trevor

He writes of hard labour, laying a
new roof—‘‘A man feels good slither-
ing over the roof hoping not to break
his bones, cheating the steepness...’’.
He writes of people he’s known, old
Balmy Julie and fat laughing Wong-
San with his gargantuan dungarees,
cooped up and waiting for death. He
writes of the crimson peonies down
Wreck Beach trail, and of playing
Tai-Chi in the snow at Stanley Park,
and the trains screeching down by the
Fraser in New West.

Closing the Circle is well worth
having even if you’re not much of a
poetry fan—gives you a new way of
looking at the Lower Mainland and
the everyday things around you. And
also lets you know better than to go to
Belur Math on Tuesday—it’s closed.
Save you a lot of hassles.

Closing the Circle is available for
$8.95 from Heron Press, Fourth Floor,
2158 Wall Street, Vancouver, B.C.
V5L 1B5.

  
  
 

 

New. Westminster

Night sounds drift up from the river:

exquisite screech of night trains grinding

steel on cold, raw steel
slowly
up the line to Port Moody;
tug whistles baw] counterpoint off

Brownsville, beneath Patullo Bridge,

chugging and chugging;

burglar alarms ring and ring back of
warehouse row;

gulls scream mad all night in feeding

orgies — oolichans are-lit by millyard

sodium lamps —
white gulls hover, veer in false light
irridescent

swoop the spawn run, cry on starts of wind

blown up from the delta;
muscle cars rev cobbled, hilly streets;

swarthy, glistening sea-lions bark and bark

for love
in moonlight.

 

  

“Il recognize no meth j
that | know. oats

use.
If you ask me,
been this way for years,”’

 

art you feel as if a section

Brilliant Trees
childhood and adult demons.

trees shaped b

inside of me. The sounds of waves
In a pool of water, I’m drowning in

(Nostalgia)

gion and self-positions in life Oth
: ers
int and suggest a past life of never-

   

| see only the basic materials | may

I may tell you it’s

the most pleasure and i
the most pain.
It becomes part of you and without

of
has been destroyed or rece

is an exorcism of

“I’m cutting branches from the

Y years of memories
to exorcise the ghosts from deen

ving

        
       
  

    
       
     
 
      
   
     
     
       
 
      
 
    
  

ending happiness...
oo Sat is cut—
00Se. Fire and wil] ;
The blood of ea

ane as a guide.
eel lost and alone
,

The album finishe
S
‘ng and dramatic Bri
Song so beautiful and

that you feel
talent. aren

 

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‘WntSEAN HNO,

the rabbit is

ell. Images are cast of

iving to follow

Divaal own you
. . I e

blind child wandering in a sect iy

with the amaz-

lliant Trees, a
well balanced

elmed by his

by Richard Haines