Erin Brenneman
LAURIE D. GRAHAM, CALLING IT BACK TO ME
VICTORIA, BC: DEER MOUNTAIN PAGES, 2023. $15.00.
Calling It Back to Me is Laurie D. Graham’s second chapbook after The Larger Forgetting (Open Sesame, 2018)—a collaborative chapbook with painter Amanda Rodenizer—and her fifth published work of poetry, following Rove (Hagios Press, 2013), Settler Education (McClelland & Stewart, 2016), and Fast Commute (McClelland & Stewart, 2022). Comprised of 13 poems, each piece attempts to reconnect with some aspect of Graham’s great grandmothers’ stories. There is a piece of our identity attached to those that came before us—their language and history. In losing her grandmothers’ stories, it feels as though Graham has also lost a piece of herself, and each poem is imbued with this sense of sorrow. It’s a feeling that will resonate deeply with anyone who has experienced a loss such as this, whether it be through immigration, colonization, or even marriage. As Graham writes in the collection’s eponymous poem:
you consider why
these are erased
and these retained,
why a name is carried
by many at once,
why we don’t just have
our own to carry.
This poem thus serves as an introduction to the collection’s themes but also an invitation to the reader to join Graham in attempting to reclaim what is lost, to try to call it back to themselves. Enjambed lines prompt the reader to go searching for the meaning, and the repetition of certain sounds forges new connections between each line, strengthening what was already there:
We mostly forget the names
of the towns they left.
We don’t forget the countries.
Borders heave. We
don’t write. Sometimes
a family doesn’t have
a story-keeper.
While many of the poems are arranged in these couplets, others embody the search for their story through different techniques. In “Paranka Charchun,” which tells one of her great grandmothers’ stories coming to the Canadian plains, the lines stretch across the page, reaching to connect with those that follow, all the while emphasizing the absence of others—details lost to time and space that can never truly be recovered.
Despite the grief that seems to permeate each poem, there is also an undeniable sense of joy, muted though it may be, that flickers to life in the details recovered that now define the people who left them: “a wooden spool, a metal tin / three hard copies of a scan of / a photo of great-great-grandparents” in “Emptying Her Basement,” or the knowledge that “she made / beautiful food / that to people who’ve / never been there / harkened the / old country” in “Sophia Czyzowski.” Graham’s ability to breathe life into these glimpses of her grandmothers is particularly noteworthy. This is what Graham leaves the reader: brief flashes of history—of these people who are responsible for her very being here—called back to her. They might never be truly complete, but they’re all she has to give, and that will have to be enough.
ERin brenneman
is a writer and editor based in Mississauga, though she was born and raised just outside of Stratford, Ontario. She is in her fourth year of Sheridan College’s Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program and most recently had two of her poems published in B222’s inaugural issue. Although she primarily writes poetry and short fiction, Brenneman is constantly looking to sharpen her skills as a reader, writer, and editor by exposing herself to a wide variety of writing and stories. She currently works as the editorial intern for The Ampersand Review.