Jessie Taylor
Brandon Wint, Divine Animal.
Toronto: Write Bloody North, 2020. $20.00.
Divine Animal is the debut book of poetry by Toronto-based poet Brandon Wint in which Wint tackles weighty themes of belonging, identity, and trauma with seemingly little fear. His opening long poem, “Incantation: Memory of Water,” sets the stage for a collection of deeply emotional explorative verse. Here, Wint explores the complicated role that water has played in the history of Black slavery, and the painful memories that lie within its depths:
As if the ocean were not unto itself a history,
a keeper of record and accountant
of the weight and spills of blood
… sliced
by slavery’s distending wave
which births me still
and becomes my nation
even as it cannot be named.
Those last words, “it cannot be named,” offer an ironic description of the incomprehensible, indescribable parts of life that Wint so expertly investigates throughout his book. His imagery has a raw elegance that most poets would envy, which enables him to tackle large and difficult topics of racism and intergenerational trauma into digestible, tangible—even beautiful—lines.
Not only are Wint’s lines evocative and emotive, they also display a clever wisdom. In his poem “Jamaica, Humbly,” Wint’s speaker is caught between two understandings of Jamaica: One that he views for himself in the present, and “one of imperfect memory, old poems / scrabbled from [his] father’s stories.” While he seems to suggest that the Jamaica his speaker sees is a “different place” (read: a non-poetic one) than the Jamaica of his father’s stories, Wint shapes it into a poetic world anyway through a cacophony of sound and active description.
Normally a spoken-word artist, Wint’s ability to craft rhythm with unmatched precision becomes strikingly clearer when his words are transported onto paper. Phrases like, “name is nascent,” “deciphering dash,” and “incant your latent shades” beg to be read aloud. While much of the book focuses on harsh realities, Wint also uses wordplay to explore more beautiful realms. His images of love and lust are lush:
“A ceremony, my mattress / a tangle of bodies wet, gushing / generous as rain.”
Are you blushing? I’m blushing.
Wint returns us often, in such ways, to the concept of divine animalism that he draws on for his title. Poetry, of course, also aspires to that concept, and holding Brandon Wint’s book feels like holding a powerful animal just waiting to be unleashed. Readers will feel that energy radiate long after closing its pages (though why close Divine Animal?).
JESSIE TAYLOR
is an avid over-thinker (this lends itself well to her poetic ambitions, though not so well to her relationships). She is an emerging editor and writer, and her work has been featured in the University of Manitoba’s literary anthology, The Arts Tribune, as well as in the online anthology Watch Your Head, and the Jewish-Canadian anthology Simchazine. She is studying Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Manitoba. She also likes red lipstick and fresh cherries in July. You can keep up with her work by following her on Instagram @jessietaylor0 or on her website at www.JessieTaylor.ca.