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.

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(Nostalgia)

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by Richard Haines