Anne Simpson

Biography

PictureAnne Simpson - Photo Courtesy of Kate Waters, 2005
Anne Simpson is a Nova Scotian poet and novelist. She is the author of four books of poetry:Light Falls Through You (2000), winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry prize; Loop (2003), winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize; Quick (2007), winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial award; and the recently published Is (2011). She has also written a book of essays on poetics, The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness (2009), and two novels, including Canterbury Beach (2001) and Falling (2008).

Simpson received her BA and MA from Queen's University, as well as a degree in fine arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library, the Medical Humanities Program at Dalhousie University, the University of New Brunswick, Memorial University, and a number of other universities. She currently lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she teaches part-time at St. Francis Xavier University.

Biographical information provided by Anne Simpson. 

Additional Information:

Author's Personal website: http://www.annesimpson.ca/

Author's Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Simpson

Loop : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vRD5z0pszI
The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2-3PQxQLmA
Falling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btBSeusnZTI
 
“Book of Beginnings”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5S6Fkgonso
“Bee and Women”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2fdddc366U
“Clocks of Rain” & “Counting Backwards”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOv6uyPS6kM
“Child”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIyvVd2uyW8

Poem: "Reliquary"


“The red soil of heaven is in the grave.” –Traditional (from the Yoruba)

Here is a bone resembling a word. And ribs, some still intact, holding 
something that isn’t there. These fragments were a person. (Get up and
sing. Tell all.) Someone swung a machete and severed head from spine.
(Sing. Get up. Twirl once, lie down). Then the red earth folded up the
body and let it seep down, bit by bit. Over here: a tooth. Not gold. Who
can hear the sound a ghost makes, biting on air?

~

Let us translate as whispers, as pauses. A little dust on the table. On the 
floor.

~

This was a woman. Remember the mermaid turned to foam? She floats
on red ground, part of her already lost. Twisted by the cloth. Her face is
covered, though no face is left. There were small flowers on the cloth, 
once. She has no legs. No hands. (Sing. Sing.) No feet. Still, the skull
remains, with its cloth. Stitch the cloth to the earth. It keeps down the
screams after dark.

~

Arms raised gracefully, the way we raised our arms as children, making
feathery wings. Angels in snow. These bones are imprints. 

~

Here are bones ending in high-heeled shoes that used to be red. The 
soles are peeling away, but the bones of the feet are still fitted to them.
From the knees up, the skeleton is covered with a cloth. Like the body
next to it, and the one over there. There are hundreds like this. Each is a 
wing, a part of a wing, or a travesty of a wing.

~

Where do we dare to look?

~

Imagine fossils. The beauty of a fragile thing, like a fern, for instance,
pressed into rock. Imagine a child pressing against its mother, if the 
child and the mother are long dead.

~

The few ribs are whitened. They curve like fingers when the palm is up,
resting on something solid. They ask. They beg.

~

The skulls are kept together, eggs in a basket. Each one is slightly 
different: white, rust-coloured, brown, discoloured, mottled, cracked. A
man reaches down and picks one that is riddled with holes. He holds it
carefully, with both hands.

~

A skull is a verb that can’t be conjugated. Not amo, not amas, not amat.

~

Some rocks in the garden at home could be skulls. One is bald and
rounded, sunk in the dirt. Dig it out, clean it, put it in a place where it
catches the light. On top of the piano, perhaps, next to the orange
begonias.

~

All of us luminous objects. Like rocks in the garden.

~

Light is an axe through the top of our heads. It splits us open, and for
one moment we see.

~

Then silence. A field of it.

~

The little door swings shut in the air. Here is a bone, a padlock.

 

Published in Light Falls Through You (McClelland & Stewart, 2000).
Used with permission of the author.

Critical Analysis: Anne Simpson and the Tangibility of Language


Lisa Banks (for ENGL 4416: Atlantic Canadian Women Poets)

Anne Simpson consistently deals with silence, gaps, and absence in her poetry. More than the space between words, she explores the gaps in language and perception, the relationship between the anatomy of poetry and the anatomy of body.

Anatomical imagery features heavily in Simpson’s poem “Reliquary.” When asked about the nature of her metaphors, Simpson details the nature of her poetics: "I ’m thinking of twists in language which cannot be reduced to meaning really easily [...] you are trying to get beyond language with metaphor because we [poets] are so constrained by it. We’re trying to move into this other place that is not language" (Words Out There 199).

“Reliquary” illustrates Simpson’s attempts to move beyond the conventional uses of language as she explores the relationship between language and anatomy. As her speaker proclaims in the first lines that “here is a bone resembling a word. And ribs, some still intact, holding something that isn’t there” (1-2), Simpson sets the tone of the poem.  Much as the bones hidden beneath the flesh hold up a body, language holds “something that isn’t there” (2)—perception, the cultural significance of language, poetics. For Simpson, “poetry is a way of remembering” (Meetings with Maritime Poets 206), making the intangible tangible through language and form. Simpson’s speaker commands: “stitch the cloth to earth. It keeps down the screams after dark” (13-14), revealing the consequences of being unable to voice experience through language. From a woman who screams wordlessly, there is “no face left...no legs...no hands...no feet...the skull remains” (11-13). Without language, the form is hollowed.

Simpson creates a parallel between experience and death, inviting the reader to “imagine a child pressing against its mother, if the child and the mother are long dead” (24-25), juxtaposing an image of life’s affections with the reality of death. With this juxtaposition now acknowledged, the aforementioned ribs now “curve like fingers when the palm is up, resting on something solid” (26). 

With this maternal display, Simpson creates a sense of domesticity in the work. This domesticity pervades, as “the skulls are kept together, eggs in a basket [...] some rocks in the garden at home could be skulls” (28-33). Simpson deftly butchers this domesticity through her use of startling metaphors such as “a skull is a verb that can’t be conjugated” (32), tying anatomy and language together.

The bond between anatomy and language reflects the formalist approach to poetry in comparison to the more experimental approach that Simpson takes in her work. With conventional poetic form, the reader envisions a rock—dense, solid, imposing. The spaces, absence, and silence in Simpson’s work invites readers to relate to the text, creating a relationship between reader, text, and author. The reader considers not only the text, but also the spaces between text, forcing the reader to fill Simpson’s absences with one’s own experiences and poetic understanding; lest one be swallowed by the silence Simpson has created to reflect a more human experience and perception of one’s world through poetry.

Silence and absence as enlightenment are examined further on in “Reliquary,” as Simpson writes that “light is an axe through the top of our heads. It splits us open, and for / one moment we see” (38-39). Simpson has commented on this light, remarking that “I think it’s a light we’re all after. It has to do with...our being sort of half asleep in the world” (Meetings...211). In this instance, however, Simpson’s speaker—and the reader—are fully awake, and aware not only of the world around them, but their place in it. As the poem draws to a close, the reader is left to consider “silence. A field of it” (40), forcing the question: what is taken away to create such a silence?

 

Works Cited (for analysis):

Simpson, Anne. Interview by Anne Compton. “Writing Paintings and Thinking Physics: Anne Simpson’s Poetry.” Meetings with Maritime Poets: Interviews. Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2006. 203-227. Print.

---. Interview by Jeanette Lynes. “Restless Anne Simpson.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing, 1999. 195-199. Print.

---. “Reliquary.” Light Falls Through You. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000. 55-57. Print.

Bibliography


Primary Sources 

Simpson, Anne, ed. An Orange from Portugal: Christmas Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2003. Print.

---. “A Name, Many Names.” Coastlines: the Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Ed. Compton, Anne, Laurence Hutchman, Ross Leckie, and Robin McGrath. Fredericton: Goose Lane, 2002. 160. Print.

---. “Bee and Woman: An Anatomy.” Canadian Literature 185 (Summer 2005): 28- 29.Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. Canterbury Beach. Toronto: Penguin Viking, 2001. Print.

---. “Deer on a Beach.” Compton et al. 158.

---. “Dreaming Snow.” Atlantica: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Ed. Lesley Choyce. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2001. Print.

---. “Eagles.” Canadian Literature 185 (Summer 2005): 28-29. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. “Eurydice afterwards.” A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry & Memory. Eds. Robert Finley, Anne Simpson, Patrick Friesen, Aislinn Hunter, and Jan Zwicky. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Print.

---. “Eurydice, Orpheus.” A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry & Memory. Finley et al. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Print.

---. Falling. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2008. Print.

---. "First Sutra." Malahat Review. (2012): 54. Print.

---. “Grass Prayers.” Antigonish Review 138 (Summer 2004): 11-13. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. Is. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2011. Print.

---. Light Falls Through You. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000. Print.

---. Loop. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2003. Print.

---. “Orpheus afterwards.” A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry & Memory. Finley et al. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Print.

---. “Orpheus Recalling Eurydice.” A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry & Memory. Finley et al. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Print.

---. “Poems.” Canadian Literature 166 (2000): 83. WorldCat. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. “Poems.” Canadian Literature 170 (2001): 19. WorldCat. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. Quick. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007. Print.

---. “Reliquary.” Light Falls Through You. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000. 55-57. Print.

---. "Second Sutra." Malahat Review. (2012): 56. Print.

---. “Spanish.” Antigonish Review 138 (Summer 2004): 14. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

---. “The Lilacs.” Compton et al. 161.

---. The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2009. Print.

---. "Third Sutra." Malahat Review. (2012): 58. Print.

---. “White, Mauve, Yellow.” Compton et al. 159.

---. “Winter.” Antigonish Review 138 (Summer 2004): 15-17. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

Secondary Sources 

Anonymous. Review of The Marram Grass: Poetry & Otherness, by Anne Simpson. Antigonish Review 157 (Spring 2009): 144. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

Campbell, Wanda. “Postmodern Ekphrasis in the Poetry of Anne Compton, Anne Carson, and Anne Simpson.” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 65 (2009): 9-21. Literature Online. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

MacLeod, Alexander. “’Having a Conversation with the Place You’re In’: Discussing the Past, Present and Future of Atlantic-Canadian Poetry with Brian Bartlett, Ross Leckie, Lindsay Marshall and Anne Simpson.” Dalhousie Review 89.1 (Spring 2009): 25-37. Academic Search Premier. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

McNeilly, Kevin. “What Remains: Anne Simpson’s Loop.” Canadian Literature 185 (Summer 2005): 197-200. Academic Search Premier. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

Sanger, Peter. “ ‘Dreaming Each Other’s Dreams’: An Introduction to the Work of Anne Simpson.” Antigonish Review 138 (Summer 2004): 7-10. Academic Search Premier. Web, print. 21 Jun 2011.

Simpson, Anne. Interview by Anne Compton. “Writing Paintings and Thinking Physics: Anne Simpson’s Poetry.” Meetings with Maritime Poets: Interviews. Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2006. 203-227. Print.

---. Interview by Jeanette Lynes. “Restless Anne Simpson.” Words Out There: Women Poets in Atlantic Canada. Lockeport: Roseway Publishing, 1999. 195-199. Print.
Poets Home