Tammy Armstrong
Biography
Tammy Armstrong - Photo Courtesy of Author
Originally from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Tammy Armstrong spent much of her early adult life in Vancouver, BC, where she obtained a BFA and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In 2005, after years of extensive travel to over 20 countries, she returned to her home province. She settled in the province's capital, Fredericton, where she is a PhD Candidate at the University of New Brunswick, working in Critical Animal Studies and Atlantic Canadian eco-poetry. Her work includes two novels--Translations=Aistreann and Pye-Dogs--and four books of poetry: Bogman's Music, Take Us Quietly, Unravel, and The Scare in the Crow. Her poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, US, Europe, UK and Algeria. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Relit Award, the Governor General's Award and the CBC Literary Prize. Armstrong was the first winner of the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award. She is currently a Fulbright scholar at Georgia State University.
For a more extensive biography of Armstrong, please visit the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.
For a more extensive biography of Armstrong, please visit the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.
It's what we've wanted:
cameras around our necks,
dogs around our wrists.
Toggled for the snow packs' unclenching,
we rubberneck the river,
search for what broke free:
a bungalow drama,
half-sunk in turbined slew,
shambolic patio furniture
thistled with shadow,
new kitchen curtains waving queeny goodbyes:
some envy in that kind of leave-taking.
Barricaded, we lean heavy
over our photography,
our swampy footprints,
watch the water eddy,
feel boondocked in the siren's zydeco
cherry-picking the side streets.
And the saddlebag preachers
washed in
from country churches make their rounds--
nomadic zealots in practical shoes
they muck and mumble a biblical limerick:
one hundred hymns on their tongues
and we're in the eye of a robin storm now
they sermonize from kayaks,
while hucksters fence sump pumps
and military personnel float water-dank
clusters of cattle downriver on cargo barges:
solemn to the passage.
This all took place before the river crested:
just bullhorn redemption
to our zoom lenses and expectations
for a washed-away house—a lumbered messiah:
TV antennae spoking above the roof pitch, staticky bright,
all of its windows blazing low sun.
Published in The Scare in the Crow. Goose Lane Editions, 2010.
Used with permission of the author.
cameras around our necks,
dogs around our wrists.
Toggled for the snow packs' unclenching,
we rubberneck the river,
search for what broke free:
a bungalow drama,
half-sunk in turbined slew,
shambolic patio furniture
thistled with shadow,
new kitchen curtains waving queeny goodbyes:
some envy in that kind of leave-taking.
Barricaded, we lean heavy
over our photography,
our swampy footprints,
watch the water eddy,
feel boondocked in the siren's zydeco
cherry-picking the side streets.
And the saddlebag preachers
washed in
from country churches make their rounds--
nomadic zealots in practical shoes
they muck and mumble a biblical limerick:
one hundred hymns on their tongues
and we're in the eye of a robin storm now
they sermonize from kayaks,
while hucksters fence sump pumps
and military personnel float water-dank
clusters of cattle downriver on cargo barges:
solemn to the passage.
This all took place before the river crested:
just bullhorn redemption
to our zoom lenses and expectations
for a washed-away house—a lumbered messiah:
TV antennae spoking above the roof pitch, staticky bright,
all of its windows blazing low sun.
Published in The Scare in the Crow. Goose Lane Editions, 2010.
Used with permission of the author.
Critical Analysis: Don McKay's Wilderness in the Work of Tammy Armstrong
Lisa Banks (ACPA Managing Editor, 2011)
Tammy Armstrong's “Up-river a House Breaks from Its Foundation” explores the tenuous relationship between nature and humanity, as well as the futility of using language to explore nature. Armstrong's diction creates a binary between nature and humanity, as the poem opens with the declaration “it's what we've wanted” (1). Using language and metaphor to convey experience, Armstrong's poem supports Don McKay's assertion that metaphors are “entry points where wilderness re-invades language, the place where words put their authority at risk, implicitly confessing their inadequacy to the task of re-presenting the world” (85).
Applying McKay's ideas to Armstrong's work shows the discord between the natural and human. Armstrong constructs a hierarchy amongst animals and humanity, as evidenced by her speaker's mention of “dogs around our wrists” (3), illustrating attempts to leash and control animals and, by extension, nature. Armstrong also sets up a divide between natural and human destruction. Though she situates humans as passive observers of the powers of nature, her language evokes mechanistic images: she writes of “a bungalow drama” (7), “turbined slew” (8), “the siren's zydeco” (17), and “cherry-picking the side streets” (18) using imagery evocative of human technology to illustrate the destructive power of nature. Even the human elements Armstrong presents are touched by nature, as demonstrated by the “patio furniture / thistled with shadow” (9-10), with “thistle” reminiscent of untouched wilderness.
Armstrong creates a relationship of activity and passivity between nature and humanity, presenting nature as an active force while humanity, collectively, is passive—we observe nature. Armstrong's speaker has a “camera” (2) around her neck, a means of capturing an image of the natural through human technology. Notably, the speaker and others “rubberneck the river” (3), again constructing them as passive observers to the active force of nature.
McKay notes that “whatever [the poet's] admiration for wilderness, she remains a citizen of the frontier, a creature of words who will continue to use them to point” (87). Armstrong uses language to point, echoing the futility of attempting to translate the untranslatable. McKay observes that “to personify the untranslated other . . . seems, in fact, to translate it into terms which are, if not exclusively human, at least composed largely of members of the 'higher' animal kingdom” (98). Armstrong plays with this divide between self and Other. While she situates the observers in the work as Othering the destructive force of nature, the “saddlebag preachers” (19) also Other through language:
And the saddlebag preachers
washed in
from country churches make their rounds--
nomadic zealots in practical shoes
they muck and mumble biblical limerick:
one hundred hymns on their tongues. (19-24)
These “nomadic zealots” illustrate humanity's attempts to understand the natural world through language, though McKay writes that the natural world creates a “wilderness—a placeless place beyond the mind's appropriation” (87), situating nature outside of the realm of language. Although humanity reaches a point where knowledge is unobtainable, both the observers and preachers of Armstrong's poem attempt to connect to nature in various ways. While the observers passively observe nature's destruction, the preachers convey attempts to invade and overtake nature in order to control the elements and protect the man-made.
Towards the close of the poem Armstrong melds the natural and mechanical, writing that “military personnel float water-dank / clusters of cattle downriver on cargo barges” (28-29). In closing the poem, Armstrong combines the religious imagery of the preachers with human construction, writing of “a washed-away house—a lumbered messiah” (34), creating salvation in language.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Armstrong, Tammy. “Up-river a House Breaks from Its Foundation.” The Scare in the Crow. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2010. 60-61.
McKay, Don. “The Bushtits' Nest.” Vis à Vis: fieldnotes on poetry & wilderness. Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2001. 83-106.
Tammy Armstrong's “Up-river a House Breaks from Its Foundation” explores the tenuous relationship between nature and humanity, as well as the futility of using language to explore nature. Armstrong's diction creates a binary between nature and humanity, as the poem opens with the declaration “it's what we've wanted” (1). Using language and metaphor to convey experience, Armstrong's poem supports Don McKay's assertion that metaphors are “entry points where wilderness re-invades language, the place where words put their authority at risk, implicitly confessing their inadequacy to the task of re-presenting the world” (85).
Applying McKay's ideas to Armstrong's work shows the discord between the natural and human. Armstrong constructs a hierarchy amongst animals and humanity, as evidenced by her speaker's mention of “dogs around our wrists” (3), illustrating attempts to leash and control animals and, by extension, nature. Armstrong also sets up a divide between natural and human destruction. Though she situates humans as passive observers of the powers of nature, her language evokes mechanistic images: she writes of “a bungalow drama” (7), “turbined slew” (8), “the siren's zydeco” (17), and “cherry-picking the side streets” (18) using imagery evocative of human technology to illustrate the destructive power of nature. Even the human elements Armstrong presents are touched by nature, as demonstrated by the “patio furniture / thistled with shadow” (9-10), with “thistle” reminiscent of untouched wilderness.
Armstrong creates a relationship of activity and passivity between nature and humanity, presenting nature as an active force while humanity, collectively, is passive—we observe nature. Armstrong's speaker has a “camera” (2) around her neck, a means of capturing an image of the natural through human technology. Notably, the speaker and others “rubberneck the river” (3), again constructing them as passive observers to the active force of nature.
McKay notes that “whatever [the poet's] admiration for wilderness, she remains a citizen of the frontier, a creature of words who will continue to use them to point” (87). Armstrong uses language to point, echoing the futility of attempting to translate the untranslatable. McKay observes that “to personify the untranslated other . . . seems, in fact, to translate it into terms which are, if not exclusively human, at least composed largely of members of the 'higher' animal kingdom” (98). Armstrong plays with this divide between self and Other. While she situates the observers in the work as Othering the destructive force of nature, the “saddlebag preachers” (19) also Other through language:
And the saddlebag preachers
washed in
from country churches make their rounds--
nomadic zealots in practical shoes
they muck and mumble biblical limerick:
one hundred hymns on their tongues. (19-24)
These “nomadic zealots” illustrate humanity's attempts to understand the natural world through language, though McKay writes that the natural world creates a “wilderness—a placeless place beyond the mind's appropriation” (87), situating nature outside of the realm of language. Although humanity reaches a point where knowledge is unobtainable, both the observers and preachers of Armstrong's poem attempt to connect to nature in various ways. While the observers passively observe nature's destruction, the preachers convey attempts to invade and overtake nature in order to control the elements and protect the man-made.
Towards the close of the poem Armstrong melds the natural and mechanical, writing that “military personnel float water-dank / clusters of cattle downriver on cargo barges” (28-29). In closing the poem, Armstrong combines the religious imagery of the preachers with human construction, writing of “a washed-away house—a lumbered messiah” (34), creating salvation in language.
Works Cited (for analysis):
Armstrong, Tammy. “Up-river a House Breaks from Its Foundation.” The Scare in the Crow. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2010. 60-61.
McKay, Don. “The Bushtits' Nest.” Vis à Vis: fieldnotes on poetry & wilderness. Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2001. 83-106.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Armstrong, Tammy. "Blessing the Boats." Fiddlehead 271 (Spring 2017): 8.
---. Bogman's Music. Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2000.
---. "The Children Are Building Their Teacher a Coffin." New England Review 43 (2022): 8-9.
---. "Collapsed Barns." Fiddlehead. (2017): 29.
---. “Dogfish.” Queen's Quarterly 113.1 (Spring 2006): 152. Literature Online. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
---. "Epithalamium: New Mexico." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 21.
---. "Flight Stop—after Michael Snow's Eaton Centre Installation." Canadian Literature 198 (2008). WorldCat. Accessed 21 Oct 2011.
---. "The Foggeries." Geist. 27.106 (Fall 2017): 48.
---. "Forked." Malahat Review. (2012): 20.
---. "The Gargoyles of Cape Island." Fiddlehead. (2017): 30.
---. "Killing Ofeig." Canadian Geographic 128 (2008): 101-102.
---. "Lake." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 19.
---. "Lunar Eclipse." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 20.
---. Pye-dogs. Ottawa, ON: Oberon Press, 2008.
---. “Rogersville: Garage Man's Daughter Back from the City.” Queen's Quarterly 113.1 (Spring 2006): 150-151. Literature Online. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
---. "Salt." Malahat Review. (2012): 8.
---. The Scare in the Crow. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2010.
---. Take Us Quietly. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2006.
---. Translations=Aistreann. Regina, SK: Coteau Books, 2002.
---. Unravel. Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2004.
---. The Varying Hare. Victoria, BC: Frog Hollow Press, 2018. New Brunswick Chapbook Series, volume 5.
---. "The Vestas: Pubnico Point Wind Farm." Beloit Poetry Journal. 65.3 (2015).
---. Year of the Metal Rabbit. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press. 2019.
Secondary Sources
"Author Spotlight: Tammy Armstrong." Interview with Tammy Armstrong. Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia, writers.ns.ca, 27 Apr. 2020. Accessed 23 June 2020.
Carey, Barb. "Poetry." Rev. of Year of the Metal Rabbit, by Tammy Armstrong. Toronto Star 11 Jan. 2020: E. 12.
Donaldson, Jeffery. “Poetry.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.1 (Winter 2005/2006): 39-88. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Ferguson, Jesse. Rev. of Take Us Quietly, by Tammy Armstrong. Antigonish Review 152 (2008): 41-43. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Guest, Kristen. Rev. of Take Us Quietly, by Tammy Armstrong. Canadian Literature 196 (2008): 148-150. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Houglum, Brook. Rev. of Bogman's Music, by Tammy Armstrong. Canadian Literature 180 (2004): 131-133. EBSCO. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
McKay, Don. “The Bushtits' Nest.” Vis à Vis: fieldnotes on poetry & wilderness. Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2001. 83-106.
VanBuskirk, John. "Tammy Lynn Armstrong." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. St. Thomas University, 2011. Accessed 31 Mar. 2012.
Armstrong, Tammy. "Blessing the Boats." Fiddlehead 271 (Spring 2017): 8.
---. Bogman's Music. Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2000.
---. "The Children Are Building Their Teacher a Coffin." New England Review 43 (2022): 8-9.
---. "Collapsed Barns." Fiddlehead. (2017): 29.
---. “Dogfish.” Queen's Quarterly 113.1 (Spring 2006): 152. Literature Online. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
---. "Epithalamium: New Mexico." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 21.
---. "Flight Stop—after Michael Snow's Eaton Centre Installation." Canadian Literature 198 (2008). WorldCat. Accessed 21 Oct 2011.
---. "The Foggeries." Geist. 27.106 (Fall 2017): 48.
---. "Forked." Malahat Review. (2012): 20.
---. "The Gargoyles of Cape Island." Fiddlehead. (2017): 30.
---. "Killing Ofeig." Canadian Geographic 128 (2008): 101-102.
---. "Lake." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 19.
---. "Lunar Eclipse." Prism International. 51.3 (2013): 20.
---. Pye-dogs. Ottawa, ON: Oberon Press, 2008.
---. “Rogersville: Garage Man's Daughter Back from the City.” Queen's Quarterly 113.1 (Spring 2006): 150-151. Literature Online. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
---. "Salt." Malahat Review. (2012): 8.
---. The Scare in the Crow. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2010.
---. Take Us Quietly. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2006.
---. Translations=Aistreann. Regina, SK: Coteau Books, 2002.
---. Unravel. Vancouver, BC: Anvil Press, 2004.
---. The Varying Hare. Victoria, BC: Frog Hollow Press, 2018. New Brunswick Chapbook Series, volume 5.
---. "The Vestas: Pubnico Point Wind Farm." Beloit Poetry Journal. 65.3 (2015).
---. Year of the Metal Rabbit. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press. 2019.
Secondary Sources
"Author Spotlight: Tammy Armstrong." Interview with Tammy Armstrong. Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia, writers.ns.ca, 27 Apr. 2020. Accessed 23 June 2020.
Carey, Barb. "Poetry." Rev. of Year of the Metal Rabbit, by Tammy Armstrong. Toronto Star 11 Jan. 2020: E. 12.
Donaldson, Jeffery. “Poetry.” University of Toronto Quarterly 75.1 (Winter 2005/2006): 39-88. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Ferguson, Jesse. Rev. of Take Us Quietly, by Tammy Armstrong. Antigonish Review 152 (2008): 41-43. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Guest, Kristen. Rev. of Take Us Quietly, by Tammy Armstrong. Canadian Literature 196 (2008): 148-150. Academic Search Premier. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
Houglum, Brook. Rev. of Bogman's Music, by Tammy Armstrong. Canadian Literature 180 (2004): 131-133. EBSCO. Accessed 22 Oct 2011.
McKay, Don. “The Bushtits' Nest.” Vis à Vis: fieldnotes on poetry & wilderness. Wolfville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2001. 83-106.
VanBuskirk, John. "Tammy Lynn Armstrong." New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. St. Thomas University, 2011. Accessed 31 Mar. 2012.
