An excerpt of the review uniquely boundary-crossing art by John Herbert Cunningham
The Fiddlehead, Winter 2010, no. 242
bush camp is one long poem broken by titles. For example, the opening receives the title "the unparalleled imagination of a bush camp nickname." As it implies, this is where the workers of the bush camp are identified:
and way down over there, the hotshot, crazy-assed
welder from St. John's, his name is
Newfie
the ornery, fork-lift operator with the red hair?
that is
Red
And of course, any Native guy on site, usually the
labourer, it just may be the 1970s in this poem
after all, he can be playing hockey, cruising the
bar, slow walking down the street, or just
workin', his nickname, guaranFUCKINGteed, has gotta
be
chief
if you do anything that resembles
reading / righting / dreams you just may be called
perfessor (4)
Francis seems to be saying here that the entering of the bush camp is a right-of-passage by which workers lose their identity and dissolve into the malaise of employment (bush camp' being metonymic of employment and, by extension, society in general), each becoming a caricature.
Note the language used in bush camp. It is not the highly refined language of romantic poetry. It is not meant to, nor should it, be. This is the language of the blue-collar - not the language of the university, but of the street; the language of the rough-and-tumble reality of working life.
There is so much more to tell about this book, so much more for the reader to discover. Francis was one of the best of Aboriginal writers. Correction: he was one of the best of writers taking poetry into a new dimension and language into a new mode of expression.
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