all the little shards

Abstract

all the little shards is a collection of short personal poems about place, examining the 24 year old speaker’s move from stagnation in semi-rural Ontario to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. As the speaker explores place and life in a new location without any support systems, he struggles with clinical depression, alcohol, social anxiety and ineptitude, as well as loneliness and dissociation with people and place. Isolation and defamiliarization of places and vernacular permeate the collection, and as the narrative progresses the speaker tries to embrace his new home to create, overcome, and enjoy a distinctly different mentality of place. The use of formal styles of poetry and flâneur motifs help locate the speaker and his thoughts while lyrical free-form pieces bring in pauses for meditation, and questions that change the speaker’s perspective, painting pictures of places scattered across the urban and rural prairie. The collection is a journey through self and place, bookended by uncertainty towards the future and the looming move away from a norm—from Ontario to Saskatchewan, and from Saskatchewan to the uncertain right as things seem to be falling into place. This uncertainty about what was before and what comes after is confronted by the aforementioned questions as places become fluid, and the speaker’s changed perspective creates personal dissonance and new appreciation for Saskatchewan.