The Back Cover

Hannah Stephenson

On the back flap of her first book of poems, Actualities, Monica Kidd’s varied and impressive careers (in addition to poet) are listed: reporter, biologist, med student, novelist.  While these professions might seem incongruous, they all require keen observation and precise description.  In Actualities, Kidd powerfully depicts small, common images — an apple tree, a hungry family, the light coming from a small house in the night, flowers bent under their own weight.  What makesher poems dynamic is Kidd’s ease with language; these poems sound neighbourly, humble, and familiar. 

Kidd’s folksy tone invites the reader into the communities within these poems; her natural, conversational descriptions of events lend an authenticity to Actualities. “It was ‘37 when the earth up and blew away,” she relates in “Cod.” “Sand in our noses and between our teeth.”  In “First Principles,” Kidd declares (as if a doctor on duty), “The Fever Hospital, 1953./ All steel and starch,/ and if you’re going somewhere/ not to die, this is it.” 

The most visually interesting section of the book, entitled “Found,” presents found photographs with small poems. These poems by themselves aren’t as compelling as Kidd’s others, but the combination of the text and images reinforces the authenticity and familiarity of Kidd’s voice. In the last (and most intriguing) section, “Field Notes,” the poems are set outside in woods that she describes as “a wealthy uncle with/ five generations of land and tales to speak.”  Kidd’s tone becomes more playful and her language more strange in this section.  In “Afterlife, in the Key of Green,” she intones, “The pond keeps singing./ For evolution is one part forgetting,/ and green is the colour of/ despair licked clean.”