The Bosun Chair
Jennifer Bowering Delisle, 120 pgs, NeWest Press, newestpress.com, $17.95
Thoughtful and melancholic, The Bosun Chair’s set of poems are about the author’s family history in Newfoundland. The collection is based around a poem written by a sea-faring relative who travelled to Labrador for work and transcriptions from conversations with her now-deceased nanny.
The poems are tender, intimate, and provide a gentle lens from which to view the hardships and joys of life in pre- and post-confederation Newfoundland. Its tone is mournful, yet the collection still feels light and easy to read. A meditation on distance, family, and loneliness, this is a wonderful set of poems containing many stories, that, as the author admits, are sometimes “too slippery to steady on.”