Clicking into place
English prof Micheline Maylor releases her second book
Becca Paterson
Staff Writer
While many students have had the pleasure of being taught by Micheline Maylor at Mount Royal University, even more students can be familiar with her work now that her new book has been released.
The MRU creative writing and poetry professor celebrated the launch of her second collection of poems, Whirr & Click, on April 4 at the Memorial Park Library.
“The original title for the book was Whirl, because much of the book is about dissociative connections. Coming of age, and elegy, for example, have this effect,” Maylor said.
“I ended up liking the sound play of the words together much more than my original title. The words were pinched right out of a couple of poems in the book that refer to ‘this whirr called memory’ and ‘click’ comes from a poem much about time.
“Although the poem refers to an hourglass, I wanted that sound-sense of the ticking hands of a clock, that definite motion of the mechanism of time. They work well together.”
She already has a notable endorsement from fellow author Douglas Glover, who won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction back in 2003.
“(Her poetry explores) the liminal space where finite life and infinite time expand and contract into one another,” said Glover, who describes Maylor’s work as “attack poems, full of desire, heart, dangerous men and revenge.”
Those who have taken either a writing fiction or poetry class with Maylor can expect a lot of what she teaches to be present in her work. She takes careful note to practice what she preaches in her writing.
“Craft and linguistic consideration are fundamental to my writing,” Maylor said.
“I do not believe that one can call herself a poet without understanding the underpinnings of both modern and postmodern formalism, or an understanding of sound and cadence as effect. These poems venture into the exploratory while keeping a firm footing in human experience and meaning.”
Maylor is also the author of Full Depth: The Raymond Knister Poems, though Whirr & Click is very different in its premise.
“Full Depth was a book of research,” Maylor explained. “Whirr & Click is braver in its exposure, its drive. I wasn’t capable of writing (it) a decade ago.
“I would hope that the reader feels a sense of joy,” she continued, “of sorrow, and a sense that perception has shifted for the experience of reading the book.”
Aside from the launch of Whirr & Click at the Memorial Park Library on April 4, there will also be an event at MRU on April 16 at the Knuckle in the East Arts building from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.