Albums
By Wendy Morton
Albums © Wendy Morton 2007
Front cover image and all photographs © Wendy Morton 2007
Prepared for the press by Stephen Morrissey
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Table of Contents
They are already photographs
My grandfather wore plus fours.
My grandmother,
in white shoes, examining the roses.
The world was full of hats
and hatters,
garden paths,
bowlers. Everyone posed
in sunlight.
My father, the exception,
hatless and smiling,
a hat trick up his sleeve,
never mad as a hatter.
They rode in touring cars.
Posed with Indians.
The public lovers
She was always taller.
At the fraternity house party
she is centre stage, glowing,
a candle in black velvet,
silver shoes.
Her ankles are perfect. 1934.
In 1935, my father in tux and tie.
My mother in silk and pearls.
The next year she wears
an orchid on her wrist. Has a dance card.
Later, gardenias. Hatless.
And so they were caught dancing
Everything as they imagined.
Cheek to cheek. Ginger and Fred perfect.
She holds his hand.
A handkerchief between them.
My handkerchief parents in waiting.
Later, his letter
From the Philippine Village Hotel, 1977.
“Darling,” and writes
of cocktails and shell collections,
boiled prawns and mangos,
pig knuckles,
of local notables
and pretty girls.
Lunch at the coconut plantation,
birding at the prison colony.
And a “lovely plump woman
who served up coffee, starfruit,
Spanish melon.”
(I am looking for a hat trick).
“Well, darling,” he ends, “hope all is well at home.”
They ride camels, elephants
The old elephant wears a sign,
“Rajasthan Tourism.” A camera finds them
hatless. Black and white.
A courtyard. My mother complained
of the food. Burning, she said.
The heat.
Darling, he said.
My black and white parents.
Later, in a desert
on a decorated camel.
My full colour invisible parents.
Her notes from Australia
Someone has a kidney stone.
The room is full of red dust.
Lunch, she complains, cold meat sandwiches.
Later, a real bed.
Fresh water pelicans.
She buys fresh water pearls.
A hat with feathers.
Tricked.
The photographs lost.
Wendy
Morton is the author of four previous collections of poetry,
Private Eye (Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, 2001), Undercover
(Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, 2003), Shadowcatcher (Ekstasis
Editions, Victoria, 2005), and Gumshoe (Black Moss Press, Windsor,
2007). Her memoir, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast (2006)
was published by Emdash Books. She is a long-time resident of Sooke, British
Columbia, where she works as an insurance investigator.
Wendy Morton initiated the first “random acts of poetry” on strangers: read them a poem and give them a book. By 2004, 27 poets across Canada joined her and in 2005 there were 27 in Canada and 9 in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland committing Random Acts of Poetry. In 2006, with the sponsorship of The Canada Council for the Arts, 39 poets across Canada were involved, bringing poetry the streets of their cities, to anyone who crossed their path.
Wendy Morton has been WestJet Airlines' poet of the skies, Daimler-Chrysler's poet of the road, and is sponsored as well by Prairie Naturals Vitamins, Fairmont Hotels, Fuji, and AbeBooks. She has relentlessly taken poetry into the street with Random Acts of Poetry and worked to bring corporate sponsors and poets and audiences together in new ways.
Critical Praise: "Wendy Morton's poetry always surprises. It embraces both humour and grief with equal measure. It expresses our human world with grace and joy." —Patrick Lane
