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Poetry. Toying with the confessional, Phil Hall's White Porcupine is a self-portrait of the artist from ages fifty to fifty-four. The creature of the title suggests (as in White Buffalo, White Whale, White Moose) the sacred primitive wild...though small...(a bit like poems); also, Death Itself (bugga-bugga); and snow rushing at the window of a moving car, years ago...tire-chains...fins; and greying hair, stubble chin; and honestly who doesn't bristle about getting old? and young St Sebastian, that doofus...naked, glowing, multi-skewered; and a black and white group photo outside a one room school house in winter...(there's mom!) each student a quill, with its name underneath. The punchline: White Porcupine is a long border-line-incomprehensible confessional poem about being miserable (oh boy!). Well, really it's about being a poet (even better!). Or, is it?
About the author
PHIL HALL is a writer, editor, and teacher. His first book,
Eighteen Poems, was published in 1973. Among his many published titles are:
Old Enemy Juice;
The Unsaid;
Hearthedral-A Folk-Hermetic;
An Oak Hunch;
White Porcupine;
Killdeer (winner of the 2011 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, the 2012 Trillium Book Award, and shortlisted for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize);
The Small Nouns Crying Faith;
Guthrie Clothing: The Poetry of Phil Hall, a Selected Collage; and
My Banjo and Tiny Drawings. Hall has taught writing at York University, Ryerson University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and elsewhere, and has held the position of Poetry Editor for Book*hug since 2013. Phil lives with his wife near Perth, Ontario.
