In this blazingly honest collection, the Canadian poet catalogues humanity\u2019s destructive impact on the natural world<\/p>\n
It is human nature to prefer our landscapes neatly framed \u2013 walls and wooden fences create the illusion that the great outdoors can be controlled and contained. Yet Karen Solie\u2019s wildly unpredictable collection Wellwater flips the script. In this blazingly honest catalogue of human-made hazard and harm, we celebrate instead the contemporary landscapes refusing to be tamed.<\/p>\n
Solie, who teaches at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, in western Canada, where vast prairies supply much of the world\u2019s pulse crops. This fertile expanse in Wellwater, however, seems tired of endless service. The poem Red Spring witnesses how \u201cweeds jump up unbidden, each year a little smarter\u201d. They are trying, almost courageously, to outwit what Solie condemns as \u201czombie technology\u201d, whose genetically modified \u201cterminator seeds\u201d sprout terrifying plants that are \u201cmore dead than alive\u201d.<\/p>\n
There is some flicker of peace in less apocalyptic pastoral scenes, as when the \u201cwhite-tailed fawns sleep inside wild chokecherry\/in hollowed-out rooms\u201d and drought-soothing rain falls like confetti from \u201cthe mansions of the skies\u201d. But for much of this poetry, as in Pines, the landscape writhes \u201cin distress\u201d. The pages reek of fungicide and glyphosate, a weedkiller that is linked poignantly by the poet to a case of non-Hodgkin lymphoma: \u201cask the crew boss who cleared the nozzle of my sprayer\/by blowing through it,\u201d Solie insists, \u201cthey can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n
This shocking correlation, examined squarely, inspires a refreshing honesty as the poet acknowledges her own flaws: \u201cI don\u2019t know how to make this beautiful\u201d, she confesses. \u201cCan we go back? Meet each other in the old knowledge?\u201d If only we could, is the tragically bitter aftertaste of these poems \u2013 a sweet life on the prairie with braids, bonnets and beauty could not be more distant if Solie tried.<\/p>\n
In Bad Landscape and the trembling aftershock of fracking and radiation, each word hangs thrillingly from a \u201clow hum of menace\u201d. Any last echo of picturesque expectations splinters with the post-industrial horror \u2013 it spills out with the oil and the sea\u2019s treasure chest of toxic waste.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just \u201cbad landscapes\u201d that burst violently into view. Solie also eats \u201cbad sandwiches\u201d in bad flats. The worst of these hellish boltholes are the \u201cwindowless and the bug-ridden\u201d, which are spectacularly reimagined in Toronto the Good as \u201ctiny museums of illegality\u201d. It is here where the real gem of Wellwater sparkles into sight, reinforcing a striking foundational premise: we are all bad landlords of the planet we call home. Or rather, collectively, we are instead bad tenants, as her condemnation of \u201cgreed and neglect\u201d encourages us to more humbly concede.<\/p>\n
In Basement Suite the image of childhood as a room with barred windows is fascinating, as are the doors between dimensions that creak open in Antelope. Occasionally, you wish Solie would linger a moment longer, lifting the latch to fully let us in. Some ideas remain tantalisingly locked, but her flourishing imagination in The Trees in Riverdale Park stuns \u2013 our vegetal cousins somehow \u201cthrive like understandings\u201d. So while some of these gems feel uncut, their intended meanings left unresolved, the raw candour of her reflections leaves us captivated nonetheless.<\/p>\n
There is surprising depth, too \u2013 profound observations in Orion explain how the \u201cdead can be kinder\/than the living,\/if you are not related to them\u201d, and in The Bluebird how \u201cGood and bad don\u2019t always line up opposite\u201d. What does line up clearly, however, is the conceit and the content, framing Wellwater in the\u00a0image of its intriguing namesake\u00a0\u2013 dark and deep, rippling secrets and surprise.<\/p>\n
Wellwater by Karen Solie is published by Picador (\u00a312.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n
This is the archive of The Observer up until 21\/04\/2025. The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media.<\/p>\n