Colin Browne’s new collection, The Hatch, extends his formal engagement with the margins of the new documentary. Myth, history, and the present are contemporaneous in these poems; nothing is ever one thing, and nothing is itself for very long.
Figuratively speaking each poem is caught in mid-air, as if delivered in the flash reflected off a twisting sheet of metal. There is a new music in these pages, improvisations on the demotic, the lyrical, and the scientific in what amounts to a season of journal entries and field notes. Included are observations of Anna Akhmatova, André Breton, Benjamin Britten, Emily Carr, Blaise Cendrars, Aimé Césaire, Marcel Duchamp, Sorley MacLean, Charles Olson, and others. Certain texts are rooted in the tradition of the garden as observatory. An 1808 sea-otter expedition from New Arkhangel (Sitka) to California founders on the coast of early 21st century conspiracy theories.
Browne’s poems have regularly addressed landscape and the intersections of personal and public history; in The Hatch there is a rhythmic and political urgency in which the exchange of forms is lightning quick. This is a book of transformations.
Colin Browne’s most recent book of poetry, Here, was published by Talonbooks in September 2020. His extended essay, Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw (Talonbooks, 2016), is a poetic exploration of three argillite platters made by Haida artist Da.a xiigang (Charles Edenshaw) between 1885 and 1895.
…of poetry – _Scree_ , Reading Sveva, and The Hatch – these three all-stars will read in New York …
…Impeccable Regret, and Colin Browne’s The Hatch. Read his full list on DUSIE . Phil Hall, poetry … Scribe notes.” And of Colin Browne’s The Hatch, Hall writes, “This poet can apparently do …
…Colin Browne, who read from his new collection, The Hatch ($19.95). Some pieces thoughtful, others … to read something new.” Colin Browne reads from The Hatch We heartily thank everyone who joined us at this …
…returns as well, with his latest collection, The Hatch , a book of transformations that extends Browne’s …