All of Us Hidden by Joanna Streetly (Caitlin Press 2025)
It might come as little surprise that I adore lyric poetry, real lyrics grounded in actual experience that produce their own wild and accurate sonorities. I can usually sense a faker, a Mary Oliver-type poem that strains within its own imagery, desperate to produce a responsive "ooooo ahhhhh" in the reader, rather than one that flows organically with a depth of awareness of line breaks and assonantal bridges and an emotion that emerges from its origins, not one generated superficially via the placement of "feeling words" on the page. All of Us Hidden is that kind of book, a deep winding through familial loss and environmental torment, indigenous awarenesses and parental yearnings. The poems surge in five parts, of which only the final one "Too Fast" felt like it could have been re-shaped and the remaining pieces inserted into the prior four sections. Streetly uses the simplest of diction (salmon, rock, spruce tree) but interweaves these pure signifiers w...
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