Caribou Run

by Richard Kelly Kemick

Overview

At one moment, a pure abstraction; at the next, an incontrovertible presence of hooves, antlers, and fur. The beating heart of this assured debut by Richard Kelly Kemick is the Porcupine caribou herd of the western Arctic.

In Caribou Run, Richard Kelly Kemick orchestrates a suite of poems both encyclopedic and lyrical, in which the caribou is both metaphor and phenomenon — text and exegesis. He explores what we share with this creature of blood and bone and what is hidden, alien, and ineffable.

Following the caribou through their annual cycle of migration, Kemick experiments with formal and thematic variations that run from lyric studies of the creature and its environment, to found poems that play with the peculiar poetry of scientific discourse, to highly personal poems that find resonance in the caribou as a metaphor and a guiding spirit. Running the gamut from long-lined free verse and ghazal form to tightly controlled tankas and interwoven rhyme schemes, Caribou Run serves notice that a formidable new talent has been let loose on the terrain of Canadian poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780864928757
Publisher:	Goose Lane Editions
Publication date:	03/29/2016
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Richard Kelly Kemick's poetry, prose, and criticism have been published in magazines and journals across Canada and the United States, including the Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, and Tin House (Open Bar). He has won the poetry prizes of both Grain magazine and Echolocation. He lives in Calgary.

Table of Contents

Spring Migration: April 1 - May 31

Introduction 11

'Kar-a-boo, n. 13

Ruminant Digestion 14

The Love Poem as Caribou 16

Crossings (Thetis Lake) 17

The Mad Trapper of Rat River, 1932 18

Ghazal of the Caribou Fence 20

The Twelve Aspects of Tragedy in Wolves Hunting 21

Migration is Disciplined Wanderlust 24

Hooves 25

The Confession of the Hunter 26

Genesis 1:24 27

Irish Elk 29

A Thunderstorm Seven Kilometres West of Old Crow, Yukon 30

Calving: June 1 - June 10

The Calving Grounds 35

Skull Formation 36

Postpartum from the Perspective of Grade Ten Biology 37

To What Is Left Behind 41

Aggregation: June 11 - July 15

Tankas from the Tundra 45

Ms. Arimo Remembers John Hornby, Caribou Bay, 1928 46

Thumbing a ride on the 93 48

Wolves 50

British Mountains, Yukon River Watershed, 1851 52

The Confession of the Hunter's Son 54

Amidst the Fog of Blackflies, a Bull Charges 55

A month and a half of sun 56

Summer Scatter: July 16 - August 7

Calgary Zoo, August 15th, 2010 59

Antlers 60

Crossings (Highways) 61

The Process of Extinction 62

Caribou Moss, Cladonia rangiferna 63

A Note Left on the Dresser 64

An Interview with a Caribou 65

Fall Migration: August 8 - September 22

Bones 69

After we had each grabbed a leg and tugged 71

The Raven and the Caribou 72

Genesis 7:11 73

Pyrrhic 75

Overhead 76

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial 77

Merchiston Ranch, Manitoba, 1894 78

Crossings (Porcupine River) 80

Prelude 83

Upon the Autumn Equinox, the Tundra Takes Inventory 84

Caribou's Shadow 85

Notes 89

Acknowledgements 91

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"You hear notes of McKay, Steffler, and Purdy's Baffin Island poems in this extraordinary first collection, which is marked throughout by a pulsing, joyful intelligence. Richard Kelly Kemick delivers us onto the great lone land with the precision and beauty of his lines. The book is breathtaking." — Tim Lilburn, author of Assiniboia

"Caribou Run honours its title subject by its sheer depth of research and by its willingness to explore the relationship between man and nature from numerous angles. Wisecracking, earnest, and charmingly obsessive, Kemick introduces himself here as a poet who believes in something larger than his own self, and so is a poet to watch." — Nick Thran, author of Mayor Snow

Editorial Reviews

"You hear notes of McKay, Steffler, and Purdy's Baffin Island poems in this extraordinary first collection, which is marked throughout by a pulsing, joyful intelligence. Richard Kelly Kemick delivers us onto the great lone land with the precision and beauty of his lines. The book is breathtaking."

Tim Lilburn

"Caribou Run honours its title subject by its sheer depth of research and by its willingness to explore the relationship between man and nature from numerous angles. Wisecracking, earnest, and charmingly obsessive, Kemick introduces himself here as a poet who believes in something larger than his own self, and so is a poet to watch."

Nick Thran

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