Published:
1st edition, 100 copies: Dec. 2007
2nd edition, 100 copies: Sept. 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9868890-1-1
25 pages
21 poems
Status: Out of Print; however a bound photocopy can be ordered from beedeecee@videotron.ca for $15 CA or US including postage
- Nina Bruck was interviewed and read from Still Light on CBC Radio 1,
The Sunday Edition (host: Michael Enright), and was featured on CBC
TV’s Montreal Matters.
- Winner of the 2008 Writer’s Circle of Durham Region Poetry Chapbook Challenge
Judges’ comments:
The poetry: This
collection is a mature, wry, and accessible series of delightful, sure
and confident poems. It is peopled with clearly evoked characters,
places, and times – spanning the period from the ‘30s to the present –
and captures exactly the different ages the poet lives through. There is
no self-pity here, despite some rough times: radiation treatments faced
with the hilarity of accurate observation (“Three young technicians aim
my breast / at The Machine, / flee to another room”); the memory of a
dead father beginning to fade, his cane in the basement “casting no
shadows”; and the elegant sense that even after a lengthy failed
marriage, the better memories will keep returning (“I made myself a dry
martini, / missing the cool precision of his lemon peeler – / its
perfect spiral”). And then there’s a playful but expert wordplay, the
kind of thing that continues to make poetry, despite the seriousness of
the theme, fun (“to the cold heat / in the sweat’s pit / where the
orange rots / then the hot’s not / to the deaf eyes / and the tom thumb /
and the legs bite / where the clocks run / and the song stops / on the
second hand / and there’s no land / to land on”).
The chapbook: The book
displays perfect, simple production values, the cover unadorned and of
the same colour as the pages. Its outsized format and generous typeface
contribute to the delight and seriousness of the collection. We have
nothing but praise for the publisher’s production of this book.
*The two other winners were Teresa Donat Banks for Resident Alien and Bill Howell for Ghost Test Flights.
SPIRAL
The day my husband left
our G.P. choked on oaths un-Hippocratic.
“If pain persists,” he cried,
“throw his clothes out the window.”
I watched them fly: socks, shorts, shirts –
every single tie.
The day my husband left
I made myself a dry martini,
missing the cool precision of his lemon peeler –
its perfect spiral.
Nina Bruck, 1923-2015, was a poet
possessed of the quickest intelligence and surest eye. Her lyrics, even
at their most profound, are leavened by playful wit and a warm,
easygoing sensuality. Ms Bruck’s poetry appeared in the Canadian
Forum, in the Canadian League of Poets Vintage 96 and 97 anthologies,
and was read on CBC radio (Morningside Papers and The Sunday
Edition). In 1992, she won First Prize in Matrix Magazine’s “New Voices
from Quebec” Competition. She also brought her talent as a keen observer
to photography. Her colour photographic series “Signs of Life” was
featured in a solo exhibition at the McCord Museum in Montreal.
CBC Books has re-posted David Gutnick’s mini-doc on Nina from The Sunday Edition.
