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The swailing |
eBook Available
With searing, sensuous language, this collection ushers us into landscapes haunted by loss and longing.
Here the long edge / of town Low / winter fog / … My breath / my offering We are / our bodies burning
Firmly rooted in fire-haunted landscapes that are at once psychological, emotional, and fiercely real, Patrick Errington’s first collection traces the brittle boundaries between presence and absence, keeping and killing, cruelty and tenderness. In these poems human voices whisper through the natural world - a hand turns on a lamp to extinguish the stars; stones outline a sleeping form; a black eye is a storm cloud. Errington stokes vivid images, formal grace, and subtle humour into the flickers of life that hold fast against unforgiving terrain. Here language functions like a controlled burn, one that could at any moment preserve, perfect, or reduce to ash.
Urgent, resonant to the bone, the swailing burns to the ember-edge of grief, memory, and control to find the wildness, wilderness, and wonder that remain.
Firmly rooted in fire-haunted landscapes that are at once psychological, emotional, and fiercely real, Patrick Errington’s first collection traces the brittle boundaries between presence and absence, keeping and killing, cruelty and tenderness. In these poems human voices whisper through the natural world - a hand turns on a lamp to extinguish the stars; stones outline a sleeping form; a black eye is a storm cloud. Errington stokes vivid images, formal grace, and subtle humour into the flickers of life that hold fast against unforgiving terrain. Here language functions like a controlled burn, one that could at any moment preserve, perfect, or reduce to ash.
Urgent, resonant to the bone, the swailing burns to the ember-edge of grief, memory, and control to find the wildness, wilderness, and wonder that remain.
Details
Part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (number 76 in series)
120 Pages, 5 x 7.5
ISBN 9780228016755
March 2023
Formats: Paperback, eBook
“Like figures walking through the smoke from a burning field, Errington’s poems emerge with remarkable definition, clarity, and surprise.” Bronwen Wallace Prize jury citation
“Radiant in its ache and teeming with beauty, the swailing absorbs the haunted geographies of home, forest, field, fire, and snow while delivering a stunning introspection through poems steeped in the winter of their own grief. So many of the last lines blew me away, and I found myself continually returning to savour their longing.” Mai Der Vang, author of Afterland and Yellow Rain
“Patrick Errington is a poet of loss and of the almost-but-never-quite-found. He shows us how, on the crest of emerging form and its dissolution, meaning flares intensely, piercingly.” Jan Zwicky
“The swailing is a powerful, unstintingly honest exploration of memory, loss, the subtle play of presence and absence, and the risks to selfhood that longing poses, explored in poems shot through with dark humour, urgency, and exemplary precision.” John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone
“Among the many virtues of Patrick Errington’s impeccably constructed debut is its nearly forensic attention to the minutest particulars: ‘Last night’s rain is pearling the spruce, the timothy.’ What is most astonishing about this exactitude is that rather than dispelling the mystery of being in the world, it fills the reader with renewed marvelling and reverence.” Timothy Donnelly, author of The Problem of the Many
“Patrick Errington's poems are conceived in attention, crafted in grace, and finished in wisdom. ‘They told me as a child to be exact with pain,’ Errington writes, and his poems are true to his credo, leaping wildly through the mysteries of mourning while extending to us the compassionate hand of form. Here is a poet who knows that form and freedom can be one, that sorrow can have an ecstasy within it, that hope might just be ‘loss finding what form it can keep.’ Here, in poem after poem, is truth.” Joseph Fasano, author of The Swallows of Lunetto
“Gorgeous poems which seem to shimmer on that constantly shifting border between the body and the landscape.” Andrew McMillan, author of pandemonium
“From the beginning of the book to the end, the poet sets the reader’s mind on fire with the luminous language, lyric intensity, and emotional heat of these poems. Patrick Errington’s gorgeous, superbly crafted gems each shimmer under the poet’s fierce gaze, and taken together achieve something grand and powerful.” Jennifer Franklin, author of If Some God Shakes Your House
“The slow burn of these poems culminates in evocative and expansive lyricism.” Poetry Foundation
“Radiant in its ache and teeming with beauty, the swailing absorbs the haunted geographies of home, forest, field, fire, and snow while delivering a stunning introspection through poems steeped in the winter of their own grief. So many of the last lines blew me away, and I found myself continually returning to savour their longing.” Mai Der Vang, author of Afterland and Yellow Rain
“Patrick Errington is a poet of loss and of the almost-but-never-quite-found. He shows us how, on the crest of emerging form and its dissolution, meaning flares intensely, piercingly.” Jan Zwicky
“The swailing is a powerful, unstintingly honest exploration of memory, loss, the subtle play of presence and absence, and the risks to selfhood that longing poses, explored in poems shot through with dark humour, urgency, and exemplary precision.” John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone
“Among the many virtues of Patrick Errington’s impeccably constructed debut is its nearly forensic attention to the minutest particulars: ‘Last night’s rain is pearling the spruce, the timothy.’ What is most astonishing about this exactitude is that rather than dispelling the mystery of being in the world, it fills the reader with renewed marvelling and reverence.” Timothy Donnelly, author of The Problem of the Many
“Patrick Errington's poems are conceived in attention, crafted in grace, and finished in wisdom. ‘They told me as a child to be exact with pain,’ Errington writes, and his poems are true to his credo, leaping wildly through the mysteries of mourning while extending to us the compassionate hand of form. Here is a poet who knows that form and freedom can be one, that sorrow can have an ecstasy within it, that hope might just be ‘loss finding what form it can keep.’ Here, in poem after poem, is truth.” Joseph Fasano, author of The Swallows of Lunetto
“Gorgeous poems which seem to shimmer on that constantly shifting border between the body and the landscape.” Andrew McMillan, author of pandemonium
“From the beginning of the book to the end, the poet sets the reader’s mind on fire with the luminous language, lyric intensity, and emotional heat of these poems. Patrick Errington’s gorgeous, superbly crafted gems each shimmer under the poet’s fierce gaze, and taken together achieve something grand and powerful.” Jennifer Franklin, author of If Some God Shakes Your House
“The slow burn of these poems culminates in evocative and expansive lyricism.” Poetry Foundation
Patrick James Errington is an award-winning poet and recipient of the 2022 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Originally from Alberta, he now lives in Scotland, where he teaches at the University of Edinburgh.
On Highway 2a Near Blackfalds, Alberta, as Night Comes On 2
For a Liberation of Bees 4
Spooky Action at a Distance 6
Taxidermy in Burning House 8
Shrift 10
Burning the Fields 12
Half-Life 13
Ars Poetica, without Child or Song 14
Alta, Leaving 16
§
Missive 19
White Lies 20
Fieldwork in Secret 22
Little Lit 24
I Was a Dream My Body Had 26
Motel 27
The Call 29
Long Last 30
§
Kwashiorkor 33
They Don’t Make Gods for Non-believers 34
Practice Makes Perfect 36
Imaginaria 38
What Gives 40
Half Measures 42
Light Revisions 44
Cold: Exchange 46
Field Studies:
1. Vignette Study, January 49
2. Field with Missing Figure 50
3. Sunset, Sylvan Lake, Alberta 51
4. Self-portrait as Possibility 52
5. Landscape Without 53
6. Untitled Sketch, Afterward 54
7. Preparatory Study for Whatever Is to Come 55
§
The Swailing 59
Call the Wolf a Wolf 61
Not an Elegy 62
When the Doctor Tells Him Her Cancer Is Back, I See,
My Father Says, and Hangs Up 64
Inheritance 66
Still Life with Approaching Crow 68
The Point 69
Fire, Catching 71
Measures of Containment 72
To a Boyhood in Winter 74
§
In the Event of Winter 77
The Hold 78
The Opposite of Poetry 80
Poem, Despite Everything 81
Gleaning 83
This Was Something More 84
Augury 86
Spooky Action at a Distance 88
Low Tide at the End of the Peffer Burn 90
To Be Redacted Should It Become Necessary 93
Only Time 95
§
Never Say Never Say Never 99
Notes 101
Acknowledgments 105
For a Liberation of Bees 4
Spooky Action at a Distance 6
Taxidermy in Burning House 8
Shrift 10
Burning the Fields 12
Half-Life 13
Ars Poetica, without Child or Song 14
Alta, Leaving 16
§
Missive 19
White Lies 20
Fieldwork in Secret 22
Little Lit 24
I Was a Dream My Body Had 26
Motel 27
The Call 29
Long Last 30
§
Kwashiorkor 33
They Don’t Make Gods for Non-believers 34
Practice Makes Perfect 36
Imaginaria 38
What Gives 40
Half Measures 42
Light Revisions 44
Cold: Exchange 46
Field Studies:
1. Vignette Study, January 49
2. Field with Missing Figure 50
3. Sunset, Sylvan Lake, Alberta 51
4. Self-portrait as Possibility 52
5. Landscape Without 53
6. Untitled Sketch, Afterward 54
7. Preparatory Study for Whatever Is to Come 55
§
The Swailing 59
Call the Wolf a Wolf 61
Not an Elegy 62
When the Doctor Tells Him Her Cancer Is Back, I See,
My Father Says, and Hangs Up 64
Inheritance 66
Still Life with Approaching Crow 68
The Point 69
Fire, Catching 71
Measures of Containment 72
To a Boyhood in Winter 74
§
In the Event of Winter 77
The Hold 78
The Opposite of Poetry 80
Poem, Despite Everything 81
Gleaning 83
This Was Something More 84
Augury 86
Spooky Action at a Distance 88
Low Tide at the End of the Peffer Burn 90
To Be Redacted Should It Become Necessary 93
Only Time 95
§
Never Say Never Say Never 99
Notes 101
Acknowledgments 105
