Conyer Clayton, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves.

Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2022. $18.00.

But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves is a stunning new poetry collection by Conyer Clayton that weaves together watery motifs to refract and reflect on trauma, grief, fear, and hope. Comprised almost entirely of prose poems, this book evokes a sense of floating, drifting slowly through the endless deep as it explores the blurred, rippling lines between memories, mirages, and dreams.
Beginning with the words “it ends,” this book subverts expectations at every moment. It invents strange realities and illusory worlds in which a hedgehog can be a phone and cat eyes linger beneath the skin. In “Memories of Waxen Men,” dinner party guests’ presence dredges up recollections of the last time the speaker saw them, while on ketamine:

“I watched them slowly walk into the ocean. Their skin was deep blue, and their hands fell apart like clay. They reached out to me as they broke into dozens of pieces, chunks of dry body and wax limbs floating atop the waves. They gathered the pieces of themselves into a rowboat and drifted away. But here they are on the couch, speaking with me as if they hadn’t already died.”

Here, Clayton explores the vague and mutable borders between hallucination and reality, between memory and the present. Conflicting truths aren’t pitted against each other, but instead they coexist in an open, dreamlike space.
The style of the prose poems helps the surreal aspects to really shine. Short, concise lines burst like bubbles while the longer ones linger on, heavy and unrelenting. Repetition provides a firm foundation for the more fantastical elements to thrive uninhibited.

“They tell us, The habits you make today will last for the rest of your lives. In the bathroom, I realize the mole on my neck has grown so large I can use it as a cape—fly to bed. As a blanket. It cannot be removed. I wouldn’t let them if they tried. Burrow in. Sleeping bag. The habits I build today will last for the rest of my life.”

From the poem “Growth,” the above excerpt creates a strong contrast between sentence fragments and the full repeated lines. Clayton plays deftly with prose, building emphasis when necessary and letting all excess rinse away.
What hit me the hardest about this collection is the way that it handles trauma and pain. I kept coming back to the poem “Queue,” enraptured by the way it probes the uncertain boundaries between internal and external limitations: “What if the emptiness you’re confined to fits you perfectly? What if knowing you can take it makes others build smaller spaces?” These lines resonated deeply, revealing the speaker’s struggle to find, cultivate, and demand room and a voice. The unanswered questions drift away in the current.
There is so much pain contained with this book, and through it all, the narrator survives and perseveres. While the poems do not shy away from facing suffering, neither do they crumble under its weight. The polysyndeton within the title and within certain poems encapsulates the themes of endurance and survival. In the face of the trauma and the pain and the loss, the story continues on. There is always another “and.”
But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves is a powerful testimony of survivorship. Set in a surreal and dreamy landscape, these poems overflow with raw emotion and wash away expectations.