I’ve been reading Rob Taylor’s poetry for years and have been looking forward to his latest, Weather (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Now, once again I’m struck by his poetry’s honesty, heart, and honed insights. That’s the thing about news-- / you’ve heard it before, Taylor wrote previously (in The News) but here his poetic updates are fresh with previously unreported advancements.
Written as a series of short haiku-inspired poems that focuses on daily domestic life, Weather is a beautiful bounty of observations, some peaceful, some piercing, achingly poignant and memorable.
Though there is no show of effort here, you can sense the compressed concentration Taylor had to put into these poems, investing his time, and craft, to reveal what is timeless—and it is not always joy or awe. Take for example this poem about his child.
Or look at this this poem, as ageless and as up to date as this evening.
These poems evoke the same acuity of Umbilical Cord by Hasan Namir, the exuberant poetry of a new father enthralled and embracing the vulnerability of parenthood. However, Weather also explores the world encircling Taylor’s life of fatherhood. There are poems of creeks and gutters, herons and hummingbirds, blossoms and bear scat—Taylor sees them all, creating poems for today that seem summoned from the time of Issa.
With its haiku dimensions, the poems in Weather can be read as easily as picking up a pebble on a beach: all you can do is marvel at how such a small object gives off such light.
— Kevin Irie is a Japanese-Canadian poet from Toronto who has recently published in Arc, The Dalhousie Review and The Literary Review of Canada. He is the winner of the 2024 Short Grain Contest for poetry in Grain Magazine and second runner up in the 2024 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest in The New Quarterly. His most recent collection is The Tantramar Re-Vision (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021).
You can find Kevin Irie's poem "The Hook of Hyphens" in Issue 301 Autumn 2024. Order the issue now:
Order Issue 301 - Autumn 2024 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 301 - Autumn 2024 (International Addresses)
