With lines like “I boils a mean kettle” and the image of a cartwheeling heart doing backflips “until she smacks into the corner of a coffee table,” I’ve yet to read a poem by Danielle Devereaux that didn’t make me smile.
For example, watch this:
“‘You are what you eat,’ dieters are told.
I ate my lover’s wedding band; now I’m good as gold.”
or Check out this poem recently published in ARC, it’s as cerebral as it is fun and well-written. Traits you’d expect from someone with enough brains to bag a Dalton Camp award. Her work has appeared in Riddle Fence, Arc, Fiddlehead, andQuArc, as well as fancy pants anthologies like, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011 (Tightrope Books). Her much awaited-for manuscript in progress was shortlisted for the 2009 Fresh Fish Award, which has become a reliable beacon for burgeoning talent in Newfoundland.
But while you’re waiting for that, pick up a cpoy of her brand new chapbook, Cardiogram. Your best bet is probably to order it here: baselinepress@gmail.com. Literatured.com called it a “a linguistic funhouse.”
Her work is accessible but with substance. She’s talented without trying to come off as talented. Her stuff is plain enjoyable. Here’s a little gem from her new chapbook, the title poem, which has already appeared in Fiddlehead, and in The Best New Canadian Poetry in English 2011.
“Cardiogram”
Since you left, I’ve had a bad heart,
always whinging and moaning
for attention. Watch me! Look-it, watch!
Cartwheels and backflips till she
smacks into the corner of the coffee table.
I yell at her to give it a rest. She just sits there,
shaking. Builds pillow forts while we
watch TV, promises to be more careful,
but by 10 p.m. she’s bored and overtired, refuses
to go to bed. I have to chase her up the stairs.
The two of us slip-sliding around on the
linoleum. My heart knows she’s been bad,
plasters the fridge with homemade cards, a bloody
red blot of herself pressed to pink construction paper:
I ♥ you, but she’s a fickle little bugger, this one,
and we both know it’s not true.
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