Review: "Boom Time" by Lindsay Bird

Boom Time by Lindsay Bird
Published 2019 via Gaspereau Press
★★★★

A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to hear both Lindsay Bird and Kate Beaton speak while they were on tour together—Bird talking about Boom Time and Beaton talking about Ducks. Despite the different forms, their books cover the same basic experience: working on the oil sands of northern Alberta.

Smoke fumbles from
stack edge to sky end
in a twenty-four-hour
flutter. On the coldest days
it will separate into
nonsense curlicues.

This is where all the cursive
went when they stopped
teaching it
in school. (12)

Spare and evocative. Perhaps my favourite poem is "Garland", describing a man of that name who knows his job but not how to read, but my favourite lines are those ones about the twisting smoke. I read this not long after visiting my father's hometown in rural BC, where the landscape is dominated by a smelter and smoke and steam belch constantly into the sky.

It took me a while to find this—I'd look for it when I visited my mother and her wonderful library system, but the library kept losing it, and unfortunately I think it may be out of print now. But the library finally located their copy, and I was finally in the right place when that happened, and it's worth the read if you come across a copy, or if you read Ducks and want to hunt down related material.