The book opens with a
scene from the fabled town of Blue, a
failed community. A place stuck in time. A colony of lunatics. Plenty represents the shifts in society
and its nefarious arc: Christianity, the beneficiaries of the industrial
revolution, the advent of product branding to the economic boom of the 1980s.
Sadly, More is the result of too much
greed, addiction and self-indulgence. We
bury our dead like we bury out towns.
What follows, in one
way or the other, inevitably circles back to the towns of Blue, Plenty, and More.
The poems are a philosophical commentary on society as seen through the eyes of
Patience, an inhabitant of Blue, as she journeys from home. What she discovers
isn’t exactly the happiness she had hoped for, but, rather a world fraught with anxiety and complicated forms of
devotion. A legitimacy to despise our
opposites.
People are suspicious by nature—voodoo, spells,
unexplained deaths. There were enough crosses in the old days to nail every
sinner twice to its wood. Children sexually abused by their caregivers. The trauma is
too much burden for their small bones to carry. The 1900s saw youngsters shoved
into chimneys and coalmines to work, and yet upon their deaths they were
immortalized in funeral photographs. Good
money spent on a picture for the mantel.
Like it or not we are
all tethered to antiquity and science, neither of which seems to have advanced
our humanity much over the years. For the
most part we say we want common good, but we also want autonomy whilst our
finger is pressed firmly against the trigger. So, where does the Tatterdemalion fit in? In the hearts of innocent children lost to
the wreckage of time.
Jennifer Londry is the
author of two books of poetry: Life and
Death in Cheap Motels, which was adapted for stage, and After the Words, which was nominated for
a Saskatchewan Book Award. A featured reader at the 2009 Kingston Writers’
Festival and at the 2011 Sweetwater 905 in Northern BC, she has also
facilitated and organized a literary event for Alzheimer’s Awareness. Jen has
taught creative writing and recently was a judge for Words from the Street, a
creative writing competition, which gives a voice to the downtrodden, in
association with The Toronto Writers’ Collective. She is also a contributor to
the anthologies: A Crystal through which
Love Passes, Glosas for P.K. Page (Buschek Books, 2013), Where the nights Are twice As long, Love
Letters of Canadian Poets (Goose Lane Editions, 2015), and has work
forthcoming in the Alzheimer’s anthology, A
Rewording Life, editor Diane Schoemperlen, creator Sheryl Gordon. Currently
Jen is collaborating with the documentary filmmaker Sarah Turnbull at the
Carleton School of Journalism and Communications to produce a mental health
video. Her third collection, Tatterdemalion,
is due this fall with Chaudiere Books.
