Paper Trails

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Are you a Control Freak or a Couch Potato? A Fall Guy or a Frequent Flyer?

No matter who you are, you will find yourself in A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House Books), the sly, clever creation of Montreal's Gabe Foreman.

"People generally flip through the book to see what's in store for them," Foreman says. "I don't want to tell people what to do, but I assume that's what they'll do."

Foreman's book is a poetical taxonomy, a catalogue of Bad Apples and Bargain Hunters. It has just won Quebec's top prize for English-language poetry, the A.M. Klein Award.

"I wanted a book that had a structure," Foreman says. "I didn't want just a collection of poems. And I wanted to write within constraints.

"I really do like browsing reference books," he adds. "I like that they're no nonsense. They stick to the facts."

Foreman's encyclopedia, though, is absurd, sad and funny. For example, Employers is a list of yes or no questions, starting with: "Have you ever been chased by a woman on a horse?"

"People like typing other people," Foreman says. "It's a common expression, 'I'm the type of
person...'

"But the idea of dividing people into types seems so reductive," he adds. "Grouping people like that is a silly, potentially bad thing to do – but that didnÕt stop me from doing it anyway, but in a cheeky way."

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Post-Apothecary (Pedlar Press), by Sandra Ridley, is a fantastical trip through sickness, treatment and institutions.

This is poetry that loosens its corsets so it can float up to kiss the sky.

"Primarily, I was very concerned with atmosphere, a shift in emotional states," Ridley says. "I wanted to see how I could do that on a page."

The book was inspired by oldfashioned obsolete remedies, decoctions, tinctures and unguents. Ridley talks about her "word gorge," researching words
leading to more words.

"I fell in love with the archaic stuff. And the places, the sanatoria," she says.

"It was a natural progression. I started researching traditional ways of treating tuberculosis and that brought me to apothecarical remedies. If you took them, you'd end up in a dream state.

"(The book is) a geography, no, a timescape of the mind. Like when you're in a fever, time and place don't matter."

The story, the sometimes scary/sexy relationship between doctor and patient, is druggedout with only fragments of lucidity.

"It's a dream story. It's not a linear story," Ridley says.

"A lot of it is a dream state," she adds. "That's where the magic lies. Places on the fringe of our daily lives.

"Creativity comes from the periphery. Crossing boundaries, it's the most interesting dynamic."