Synopsis "Foreign Park (in English)"
Fiction. Most Anticipated Poetry selection, 49th Shelf. Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes), 2016. FOREIGN PARK situates itself in an epoch where prior assurances of the natural world's solidity begin to slip. Poisons enter the Fraser River Basin. An oil slick approaches by night engulfing a fishing vessel, leaving its captain in open waters. Page after page, FOREIGN PARK makes strange with its inhabitants. As it unfolds, it plots itself along the Fraser River overlaying myth and historicity with present day. These calm poems detail the effects of destruction on land and simultaneously explore family and community in Vancouver's coastal cityscape. FOREIGN PARK guides through subtle shifts in temperature and elevation in order to engage with questions on death, ageing, family and fidelity. Jeff Steudel's FOREIGN PARK measures an immediate world through the palpable juxtapositions of the local, what's close to hand, organic flashes of the day's objects that can be touched. The 'foreignicity' of his poetic park reveals the paradox of where and how we live, that in-between margin in the world where we 'don't need to know everything' and 'Every five minutes together [is] a new world.' These poems shimmer in their aliveness.--Fred Wah, former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and recipient of the Governor General's Award for Poetry ... In Jeff Steudel's FOREIGN PARK, cityscapes become landscapes become environmental wastelands become personal metaphors, leaping from page to page and moment to moment with a calm, intense thoughtfulness like the morning after a hard night's drunk. Careful and poised, yet possessed of a certain self-effacing charm and a genuine warmth, FOREIGN PARK is surprisingly complete and mature for a first book...Fans of naturalist poetry will enjoy FOREIGN PARK, as will readers looking for a more modern take on the style. Steudel brings a fresh, modern and deeply personal perspective to the Canadian landscape through careful craftsmanship, deeply thought out observations and gentle imagery which sees the everyday and calls out new meaning from within it.--Arc Poetry Magazine
