Photo of the Sculptor as a Young Boy
At eighteen months the boy has the clarity of a tuning fork;
an interior self set to a faint vibration,
caused, no doubt, by the slide of rubber on skin
as he catches the ball he’s been handed
and instructed to hold. His vivid grip—
the way his piano fingers span the circumference—
compels the viewer not to his sweet face
but to the instrument of his body, hands in particular,
made for holding the tension
in the mapping of surfaces:
see his thumb worry that fleck of loose paint. The burn
of his life’s work ahead of him.
Cornelia Hoogland’s “Trailer Park Elegy,” (Harbour, 2017), a book-length long poem, was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ 2018 Raymond Souster Award. Hoogland’s full-length play “RED” (Fountainhead Theatre, directed by John Gerry), is based on the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood, as is Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn), which was short-listed for the ReLit Award for Poetry. Cornelia Hoogland writes about, and sits on panel discussions of the Long Poem form. Two short-list nods from the CBC Literary Prizes include Tourists Stroll a Victoria Waterway (Poetry) and Sea Level (nonfiction). Cornelia Hoogland lives and writes on Hornby Island, British Columbia, in the Salish Sea.
To view other poems published in this issue, 6:2, please visit Vallum’s website.
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Vallum: Contemporary Poetry 