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Cairns & Basins

by Ryan Kuhn

87 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-1179; ISBN 1-55395-464-5; US$14.50, C$17.99, EUR11.70, £8.20

This collection grew out of the time spent in the damp, specatcular and mythical landscape of British Columbia's mid-coast. The poems in Cairns and Basins are meditative; the place itself is the destination- the poetry is the getting there.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book Cairns & Basins is a walking poem. It was written over a three-year period while living in the remote Bella Coola Valley on the mid-coast of British Columbia. Rugged mountains, rivers and people - all of these made for a series of poems brash in form and content. "Topographical" is likely the best way to view these poems. There are two forms, cairns and basins, and each is crafted in the way my mind travels the landscape. The cairn form evolved out of many years of influences, travel, trials and error. They are comprised of word-markers, stones placed on the switchbacks of the mind. The stanzas are turning points that do not lead, but let you know you're on the way. The words resonate in stumbling, deliberate and often echoic cadence as one will traversing mountains and valleys. They are the way I went as I searched a familiar yet obscure landscape of ferns and granite, grizzlies and salt water. Basins are a vessel and a valley. They are the free-flowing container of impressions that pour out into a final, poetic drip. Closer to the gardens, hearths and pubs, they are where we dwell with family and friends. From there we set out, and again return.

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About the Author Ryan Kuhn is a journalist, writer and photographer currently living in Golden, British Columbia, with his wife Nicola and his dauther, Samara. Originally from Orgeon, Ryan came to B.C. in 1995, and shortly after moved for a period of three years to Bella Coola on the province's remote mid-coast. This collection grew out of the time spent in that damp, spectacular and mythical landscape. The poems in Cairns & Basins are meditative; the place itself is the destination - the poetry is in the getting there. His work has appeared in regional and national magazines, both in print and on the Web. This is his second collection of poems.

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Sample Excerpts

TO SET OUT WITH
Word arrow released with aim on the bow of breath, I Rexhale, release- obsidian edge maple straight feather flight- the finger should do nothing more than get out of the way
	Breathing starts with stone from up- valley jack pine along the Great Road Rainbow Mountains- glass rock pressed flakes in buckskin ink in pulp the craftsman the hunt from silence begun
Everything begins in song- chest drum beats under a blanket of flesh I track and am fast hunted, searching and searched for the words allowed into the circle one eye on my tongue
	Breathing starts with the tree on the river's bank granite stone sits on the bed- water wheel carve round what grows inside out a notch at each end binds the air
What is the object of the goal- to set out with out aim roll the foot on its side silent through alder leaves, mist from the mouth searching for a trail of tracks
	Breathing starts with the wind that makes the wing- a thin star guides the moon on the horizon an arrow's path of bird's flight
The first song a dream of my grandmother Clearwater Falls into the Umpqua- Illahee nika moosum nanitch Sahalie Tyee- a small bundle of tobacco
	An arrow shot straight into the sky hovers and falls back hitting the mark- that is all the explanation that can be offered
It is not the hand it is not the stone it is not the tree it is not the bird- the kill is none of these the kill is all of these
	Of these the song and name cannot be sung the name we cannot call ourselves- the kill ourselves the name Faint tracks in a clay turned to stone; it will take awhile
180,S Into where we find ourselves, a memory laid upon those who contain, anytime it arises, a hint, scent or seashell - gardens do this early in the morning especially, goldfish in a rock pond, but we're not our self the tenancy - cairns cannot hold some, how clouds twist the circumference, travel a stone's throw in ripple's unravel - intent on the way ashes and dust melt in rivers, or one childhood I reckon was what is of her faded into me, polished memories, water and bones -
Clearwater Falls up along Hwy. 38 vine maples change into a coastal spring on Umpqua River Ump-se-quah (the other side) where your urn's lid tipped and I go on with this emptying
BRUSH POINT
	Late spring snow anonymous black-hooded chestnut chickadees gather and flee among cedars- cars leave to town the hollow space where daily tracks of ritual ice scraping circumambulated remains
	Recollection rehash yesterday how one rendered eyes of the sun- Moon Face mirror of: -'how do you do it?' -'that is my art'
East winds hold still the lakes, move weather to sea and the affects of trees- how thoughts send seeds into this flow as if they were even something less actual
	Painting the hunter's silhouette arms outstretched like an eagle prays through himself- wolf below raven above him- negative space, a universe all the more or less
In town down by Bentinck Arm to the Pacific delta widens blows open boats rocking in their slips across from the hollow cannery once was little China Town over there opium pipes among the cinders under white
	It is a quality of the past how to paint snow alone it is to be and poor as ancestors journeyed like a season overland- what stays in me empty as a brush stroke withheld and gives a fullness to be here, as always
This estuary throughout pilings stand some things remain- the pattern in which a fingernail grows after death
	'It is your center your chi' he says- precision is not a compromise of inspiration: whatever comes or to which you arrive like R.G.'s 'All we saw was Where there was to go Not where we'd never get'
Lu Tzu said 'The country which is nowhere is the real home' no      where now      here on the edge of this sea and stone language lapping to its thinnest brush-point

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Catalogue Information

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