Matt Boylan
MA|DE, ZZOO
Windsor: Palimpsest / Anstruther, 2025. $19.75
ZZOO is many things. If you’re looking for richly intertextual contemporary poetry full of allusion and shrewd wordplay, ZZOO is for you. If you’re looking for an ontological exploration of the nature of being, then ZZOO is for you, too. If you want writing that shirks notions of anthropocentrism and deconstructs the duality between human and animal, ZZOO is what you’re looking for. If you simply want to engross yourself in captivating new Canadian poetry for the sake of its beautifully crafted language and masterful symbolism and imagery, ZZOO is also for you. In its essence, ZZOO is—and has something—for everyone.
ZZOO is the debut full-length collection of poems from MA|DE, the collective pseudonym to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace, a collaborative writing entity and unity of two voices into a single poetic third that speaks through this collection. As a result, ZZOO is a beautifully holistic endeavour; MA|DE themselves are intertwined within the speaking “we” of ZZOO as not only both animal and human, but as singular and plural, author and author(s). It is one of the many meta-textual elements that bolsters an already staggeringly deep piece of work. Broadly, ZZOO asks us questions about the duality we imagine between human and animal. What differentiates the two? What establishes one’s primacy in the universe? In their writing, MA|DE trounces any sort of antiquated anthropocentric view that might distance us from “our collective subset of fundamental furries” in favour of an illuminating eco-centric unity.
One’s immediate impression upon picking up this book for the first time is the distinct poetic voice’s attention to detail. Each page is carefully composed and beautifully wrought with intention in both form and content; each poem is paired with specific graphics and unique typesetting. ZZOO is being released with five different cover variants, each with their own unique flair.
In the world of ZZOO, the distinctions between form and content are blurred. In the poem “CRYOCAESURA,” the language bores down the page between its retainer of small grey particles, symbolizing the content “deep inside / a drill hole” in the piece—yet its literal representation in form is transubstantiated into allegory:
the machine
within now
breathing
through
the lines
Here, and throughout the book, the duality of form and content coalesce. In “VORTEXT,” the text is literally vortexed, as the words swirl to form an oblique triangle of a “leviathan’s vicious, / talespinning sparkle ...” These formal innovations breathe life into the language of ZZOO, as the structures visually manifest the poems’ contents.
The roots of ZZOO sprawl outward into a plethora of literary and cultural influences that are infused within each poem, and that attentive readers will find rewarding. These are elucidated within a complementary “TAXIDERMIA” at the end containing notes on specific influences, references, incantations, and transliterations of everything from microscopic multicellular creatures to deities of the Knights Templar. It is incredibly deep and poetically sophisticated, infused with layered devices like zeugma and aphorism that complement and challenge each other, as in the poem “SUBSIDIZED HOUSING FOR SMALL BIRDS”:
A lost iPhone vibrates
against a hummingbird
song. Tweets resurface,
echoing through the forest
until someone is there to
hear them.
Most impressive throughout ZZOO is MA|DE’s extraordinary attention to detail, and their almost bibliophilic attention to the composition of each poem. Close readers will feel the heart imbued within the writing, the passion behind the work’s creation, and the genuine, contagious belief in the message. It seems that we live in a culture that is increasingly removing itself from natural experience, and ZZOO is a refreshing step back, away from—or perhaps across—the divide. It is fresh, authentic, genuine, and a truly deep piece of work that warrants attention and admiration; it fences in a small but powerful world that poetry lovers will want to revisit again and again to observe language on display in an artful facsimile of its natural habitat.
MATT BOYLAN
is a writer and reader who loves the avant-garde. His shelves are full of unconventional and experimental fiction—and with a soft spot for classics—he spends too much time in thrift shops looking for collectible editions of books he already has. He is an avid participant and proponent of the CW&P community—working as art editor at B222 Journal, taking part as a student mentor, and volunteering at such events as Sheridan Reads. He is working toward his Honours Bachelor in Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College. His work appears in B222 Journal, and his debut review appears here, in The Ampersand Review, Issue No. 8.