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A wide-ranging meditation by an accomplished poet on the uncontainable materiality of the world. From yoghurt tubs to pop-up books to bobcats, from cement trucks to lost socks to the products of conception,
Meditatio Placentae, Monty Reid's twelfth collection, is a book about unruly stuff. Stuff that functions but also stuff that exceeds, stuff that dreams. A gathering of short poems wrapped into longer sequences, this is a book that pays attention to the world, in all its dizzying forms.
The poems in
Meditatio Placentae cluster around certain ideas, experiences, narratives; sometimes they cohere, sometimes they only assemble, but they are always at crossroads where people and objects collide. In these poems matter itself--including the placenta of the title poem--is vibrant, and argues for its rightful recognition.
"When the time comes, the broken water disappears
into the seam of itself, and then the carry-on full of small bones
articulated as an I will also disappear.
They will be expecting me then.
And what would be the point of hanging on?
Just to be the lining of belief, after belief itself is gone?" (from "Meditatio Placentae")
About the author
Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, worked for many years in Alberta, and now lives in Ottawa. His books include
Garden (Chaudiere),
The Luskville Reductions (Brick), and
CrawlSpace (Anansi). Recent chapbooks include
Kissing Bug (phafours),
Moan Coach (above/ground) and
Site Conditions (Apt. 9). He has won Alberta's Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry on three occasions, the Lampman Award, National Magazine Awards, and is a three-time nominee for the Governor General's Award. He is currently the Managing Editor for
Arc Poetry Magazine and Festival Director at VerseFest, Ottawa's international poetry festival.
