By Alison Calder鈥�
Published by Jackpine Press鈥≧eview
$30 ISBN 978-1-927035-21-4
Into the laboratory we go: the 14 poems in established writer and Winnipeger Alison Calder鈥檚 Connectomics are like little scientific explosions of light. Things you didn鈥檛 know you鈥檇 want to know but are glad you know now. In her words, 鈥淭he idea is\to render the brain\transparent enough to read through.鈥� That鈥檚 heady stuff, but Calder takes this concept and renders it into thought-provoking poems that show she鈥檚 a master of metaphor, and prove her literary experiments work.
The brain as poetic fodder makes good sense. It鈥檚 complex, essential. And Calder, who teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba, explores it from interesting angles. In Clarity2 she imagines the mind of a mouse that鈥檚 had firefly genes spliced into for Alzheimer鈥檚 research. 鈥淚nside his skull\the past incinerates鈥� she writes, 鈥渇ragments\of a film that鈥檚 not replayed.鈥� On the page opposite this short poem there鈥檚 a white image (on black) of a brain. It looks like a medical image and it resembles art.
The subject of the next poem, C Elegans3, is 鈥渁 small, soil-dwelling nematode.鈥� (The accompanying drawing reminds me of paramecium from high school biology class). 鈥淚鈥檓 useful because I die quickly:\your funding agencies approve.鈥� I鈥檓 going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Calder may be the only poet in history to appropriate the voice of C Elegans3. The barn owl 鈥� 鈥渁 spirit with a heart-shaped face鈥� 鈥� is also used in connectomics research.
It鈥檚 the metaphors that really stand out in this smart chapbook. In the poem Science6, we read that consciousness is a 鈥渃able, a cord tying things down in a truck box\so they don鈥檛 fly out,鈥� and the skull is 鈥渁 box of books you move\from house to house to house.鈥� In another poem, the brain is described as 鈥渁 dense constellation\of carefully mapped drawers.鈥� How original. I applaud and appreciate this use of everyday objects: it balances the potentially difficult-to-grasp scientific matter and brings it right down to Earth where we can see and understand it.
Not all of the poems are as cerebral as the opening pieces. Memories also worm their way into this collection, and here the poet fires up our senses with specific details on a prairie night when 鈥渢he whole sky鈥檚 a theatre鈥�: 鈥渞ough boards scratch your sunburned legs\and catch the seat of your bathing suit鈥� (Functional Specialization7). I feel that.
The explanations at the bottom of each page are fascinating on their own 鈥� in their controlled conditions鈥� studies of fear memories, 鈥渟cientists subject patients to electric shocks while introducing unique scents like lemon or mint.鈥� Then they see how their subjects react to these scents during sleep. Who knew? And have you heard of optogenetics? This is the use of 鈥渁 burst of light to affect genetically sensitized neurons in the brain鈥� so 鈥渞esearchers can manipulate a subject鈥檚 moods or behaviours.鈥� Crikey.
Oh, the many things we humans don鈥檛 know. And the growing number of things we do. Connectomics is mind-opening.
This book is available at your local bookstore or from the saskatchewan publishers group .
