word: Toronto's literary calendar
May/June 2005
by Sunnuz
In her first collection of poetry, Sandra Alland builds a web of metaphors to be seduced by and to get hopelessly caught in. She reads the vulnerability of the body through translation, and her sensuality is captivating. A Toronto-based writer, performer and photographer, Alland offers her first full collection of poems entitled Proof of a Tongue. Author of four chapbooks, Alland's work has appeared in anthologies and literary journals throughout Canada, the US, Mexico and Spain. A multifaceted talent, Alland exhibits the potency of her discriminating voice in Proof of a Tongue.
She said:
You have to beat
an olive tree before
it'll bear fruit.
...
Amazing what grows
out of pain. (‘Division’)
Proof of a Tongue presents bodies anchored in mundane life, in secondary cities like Orillia, bodies passing by strip malls, eating at fast-food joints and exploring the dark alleys of youth. Right from the title, she offers up a profound metaphor of translation and the body; something she tackles with mastery in pointed moments concentrated in the middle section entitled ‘Motion Muted.’
She showed me her palm
and said,
I'm a little person.
Then she began
to crawl inside me
to prove it.
Just let her try,
I thought,
not having noticed
I'd had a space her size
beneath my rib cage
for years. (‘The Space’)
The collection has every symptom of a French feminist work, with deeply sensual language and recurrent reference to the body, only she doesn't write the body, she reads it. The difference is in the attitude. Alland's work has a posture of observation rather than subversion and is most penetrating in this act.
I have a memory
like the ocean;
everything thrown in
always washes up.
Only in a different order
and at the moon's discretion. (‘Flow’)
She makes a successful attempt to seam together a contemporary voice comprised of many tongues that speak wit and sad irony with such charm.
My first memory
is of drowning in Mexico.
It could have been
a romantic story, if my
family hadn’t been
such tourists. (‘Rip Tide’)
She builds a cohesive space where church, skateboards, mature love and rock make sense together. Some of her poems loosen at the end, but many accelerate toward conclusions that tear out a space in the mind, to inhabit long after the work is done.
In English, you say,
What are you reading?
Rarely who.
(‘Lost While Translating’)
She demonstrates her skilful use of sound and experiments with form, writing some arresting one-liners.
Whenever they asked about love
I said yes
(‘I Could've Been Famous If It Weren't for a Few Small Glitches’)
Proof of a Tongue is not only a striking first collection of poetry, displaying immense talent and skill, but also a clear assertion that her best is yet to come.