Hard Light

By Michael Crummey and Lisa Moore

On the occasion of the press’s 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the fifth of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This edition of Hard Light features a new Introduction by Lisa Moore, a new Afterword by the author and a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst.

First published in 1998, Hard Light retells and reimagines his father’s and others’ stories of outport Newfoundland and the Labrador fishery. These deeply felt poems are rooted in the places where “human desire comes up against rock” (John Steffler).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Feb 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771313872

Michael Crummey

Michael Crummey wurde 1965 in der Bergarbeiterstadt Buchans, Neufundland, geboren und zog mit seiner Familie Ende der 1970er Jahre nach Wabush, Labrador. Er ging zur Universität und begann zu allem Überfluss bereits im ersten Jahr, Gedichte zu schreiben. Kurz vor Abschluss seines Studiums gewann er den Gregory Power Poetry Award. Schon Crummeys Debütroman »River Thieves« (2001) war wie »Galore« (2009) und »Sweetland« (2014) ein kanadischer Bestseller, er gewann in der Folge etliche Literaturpreise. Crummey lebt mit seiner Frau und drei Kindern in St. John’s, Neufundland.

Book preview

"[Hard Light] fully inhabits the earth, air, fire and water of Newfoundland . . . outstanding."

— FRASER SUTHERLAND, Globe and Mail

. . . He is a brilliant stylist: never obscure and rarely pedantic. . . . Crummey takes us on outer and inner journeys from which we return with an understanding of eternal forces too powerful to conquer but always necessary to challenge.

— R.G. MOYLES, Canadian Book Review Annual

". . . The anonymous voices of Hard Light speak to us as distinct individuals. What comes through again and again in the foreground of their short tales is their determination and awareness . . . a concise, poignant social history of Newfoundland."

— JOHN STEFFLER, Labour/Le travail

"[Hard Light] accumulates a power that honours its dead with noble straightforwardness."

— BILL ROBERTSON, Saskatoon Star Phoenix

. . . An exquisitely evocative world . . . the apparently ordinary shimmers with a matter-of-fact clarity guaranteed to curl your toes.

— JUDITH FITZGERALD, Toronto Star

"The three sections of this book constitute different approaches to ways of life which no longer exist; the language which renders them is precise, understated, eloquent. Hard Light marks Crummey’s emergence as a poet of distinction."

— CLAIRE WILKSHIRE, Canadian Literature

BOOKS BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY

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Arguments With Gravity · 1996

Flesh and Blood · 1998, 2nd ed. 2003

• Hard Light · 1998

River Thieves · 2001

Salvage · 2002

The Wreckage · 2005

Galore · 2009

Under the Keel · 2013

Sweetland · 2014

HARD LIGHT

Michael Crummey

Hard Light

with a new afterword by the author

and a new introduction

by Lisa Moore

BRICK BOOKS

Copyright © Michael Crummey 1998, 2015

Brick Books Classics first edition, 2015

ISBN 978-1-77131-387-2

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

BRICK BOOKS

431 Boler Road, Box 20081

London, Ontario N6K 4G6

www.brickbooks.ca

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Crummey, Michael, author

Hard light / Michael Crummey ; a new afterword by the author and a new introduction by Lisa Moore.

(Brick Books classics ; 5)

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-77131-387-2 (epub)

I. Moore, Lisa Lynne, 1964–, writer of introduction II. Title. III. Series: Brick Books classics ; 5

PS8555.R84H37 2015          C811’.54          C2015-900186-2

CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION: Salvaged from Darkness, by Lisa Moore

Rust

— 32 LITTLE STORIES —

· Water ·

East by the Sea and West by the Sea

The Way Things Were

Making the Fish

Acts of God

The Law of the Ocean

Grace

When the Time Came

Fifties

· Earth ·

Bread

Root Cellar

Husbanding

Stones

Bay de Verde

The Burnt Woods

Jiggs’ Dinner

Old Christmas Day

· Fire ·

32 Little Stories

Bonfire Night

Flame

The Tennessee Waltz

Bonfire Night (2)

What We Needed

Solomon Evans’ Son

Infrared

· Air ·

Her Mark

Procession

Old Wives’ Tales

Two Voices

Your Soul, Your Soul, Your Soul

Kite

Stan’s Last Song

Dominion

— DISCOVERING DARKNESS —

‘Magic Lantern’ (April 1889)

· Learning the Price of Fish, 1876–1887 ·

‘And now to make a start as a boy of very little understanding.’ (1876)

‘A hard toil and worry for nothing.’ (1879)

‘A trip to the Labrador among the Esquimaux’ (1882)

‘The price of fish.’ (September, 1887)

· Expecting to Be Changed, 1887–1894 ·

‘On the broad Atlantic for the first time to cross the pond.’ (November, 1887)

‘Names of the Ropes’ (1887)

‘Crossing the equator. Arrived in Rio Grande.’ (1888)

‘Arrived in Hong Kong, November 9. The histories of China.’ (1888)

‘The Fearnot of Liverpool’ (1889)

‘Arrived in Odessa, Russia. Bonaparte at Moscow.’ (1889)

‘In a great row and got locked up.’ (1890)

‘Observatory on Mount Pleasant’ (1890)

‘A hard looking sight but not lost.’ (1890)

‘Taking photographs.’ (1891)

‘Now in Africa among the Natives.’ (1891)

‘A narrow escape almost but saved.’ (1892)

‘Useful information, the Holy Lands’ (1893)

· Understanding the Heart, 1894–1935 ·

‘When I started trading.’ (1894)

‘Boat Building.’ (1899)

‘Who can understand the heart of a man.’ (1907)

‘Distance from Newfoundland. Northernmost grave in the world.’ (1913)

‘Life and its pleasures.’ (1921)

‘At home on a cold winter’s night. The changing scenes of Life.’ (1928)

‘An old sailor’s portion.’ (1932)

‘Pulling along toward the last end of the Warp of life and the man changes.’ (1935)

— A MAP OF THE ISLANDS —

What’s Lost

Naming the Islands

All the Way Home

Stealing Bait

Cousin

Capelin Scull

Water Glass

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Hunters & Gatherers

The Women

Cain

The Cold War

Moravians

Painting the Islands

Company

The Change Islands

Cataract

AFTERWORD

A Note on the Text

Biographical Note

INTRODUCTION: SALVAGED FROM DARKNESS

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■ Michael Crummey’s Hard Light is an homage to the Newfoundland past, a fervent wish to rescue it from darkness, render its voices, to make it speak.

Throughout this collection Crummey does something akin to taking infrared photographs – like the thermal imaging technology that tracks the loss of heat in a modern dwelling – except the author imagines photographs of houses long since gone. Instead of the signs of heat escaping a poorly insulated eave or doorframe, Crummey’s fanciful images show the traces emanating from the stones people heated in the woodstove and slipped under their blankets at night to keep their feet warm, or the bright halo that an infrared image might record around the bun of a matriarch, passing from one room to another, a century ago.

These fanciful photographs might register the energy of lost loves, the ghostly traces of children and pets, long buried and forgotten. The traces in Crummey’s thermal imaging might look like the blasts of psychedelic colour rendered in modern infrared photographs, but instead of heat loss, those blasts would register lost stories.

Crummey is tracing memories and artefacts, stories he has heard from relatives, stories he has gleaned from old photographs, stories half-imagined and thoroughly true. The infrared images conjuring the past in this array of fragments, poems and vignettes might capture all kinds of traces: demolished houses, shipwrecks, the deed to a plot of land, a cemetery in the Burnt Woods, a church bell; a peppermint knob dropped by an older sibling into the screaming throat of a baby in order to get the baby to shut up. The older sibling is intent on stopping the infant’s screams until, in the unexpected success and sudden quiet that follows the peppermint knob, the baby turns the colour of a partridgeberry and the children’s mother rushes to hold the child upside down until the candy pops out.

Screams resume; life returns: the baby’s voice.

Hard Light is full of voices, most particularly the voice of the writer’s father, Arthur Crummey. As Michael Crummey says himself, in the Notes on the Text, More than anyone else’s, though, it is my father’s voice and his stories that made me want to write these things down.

The voices throughout have the cadence of oral stories, are full of rhythms and turns of phrase that have been hammered smooth through the telling and retelling, full of insight and morality, full of the intensity of childhood joy and mischief.

On childhood mischief: Uncle Lewis Crummey was the shortest man in Western Bay, five foot nothing and every inch of that was temper, we had a great bit of fun with him when we were youngsters.

The children decide to pull a prank on Uncle Lewis that makes sport of his lack of height, but much later, when Lewis Crummey is buried in the Burnt Woods Cemetery, the narrator becomes circumspect: "Six feet of dirt for you

Reviews for Hard Light

[TarasBabiak · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The proximity and, at times, intimacy of experience in reading.