I’mpossible collab by Klara du Plessis was published by Gaspereau Press in 2023
Klara du Plessis’ new book of literary essays I’mpossible collab (Gaspereau, 2023) insists a critic of poetry need not be an island entirely of herself; rather, one can “write, write with, or write alongside”1 a poem. To illustrate this, du Plessis begins her book dedicated to exploring a unique twist on the concept of “collaboration” by suggesting in the opener “Essays, As Say —” that “[w]hen poetry faces its public, [its] welcoming gesture is implicit.”2 In du Plessis’s eyes, a poem is a tacit invitation to the reader to read, think parallelly with, and “inhabit” its formal qualities.3 To elucidate this, I’mpossible collab playfully personifies poetry with a figurative set of “open hands” that implore, “[C]ome. Read me. Think alongside me. Inhabit me through the creative and critical circuits of the body and brain. This invocation activates me as [a] reader, placing us face-to-face.”4
Du Plessis’s “open hands” visual precedes a key moment when she breaks the fourth wall to poke the reader to “[n]otice the pronoun shift from me as poetry to me as author of this book, to us.”5 By using this metatextual maneuver, she intonates at I’mpossible collab’s overall premise — namely its essays assert that literary criticism is inherently collaborative or relational in nature. Or, rather, du Plessis’s thoughtful essays insist that critics can relate “face-to-face” with poetry in ways that initate deeper, more symbiotic ways to think alongside it.
Du Plessis, whose debut poetry collection, Ekke (Palimpsest, 2019), won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, channels her creative talents throughout I’mpossible collab to call into question the increasingly antiquated misconception that the modern-day critic, essayist, and scholar works in solitude as if solely accompanied by the dim, artificial glow of their computer screen. Indeed, du Plessis approaches critical writing through her own unique lens as a poet to assert a more synergetic approach to literary criticism — foregrounding the notion that writing about poetry is about writing with or in relation to it:
When I write essays, it is a collaboration. Poetry uncollars itself from the illusion of essentializing definition, and I bring myself not only into interpretation but also into openness as an author and thinker in relation to texts. What I write about is poetry. How I write about it is as a poet myself, but also from my positionality as a person.6
What makes I’mpossible collab such an important and timely work is that its ten essays exemplify ways to read poetry more holistically within or even against the grain of the present by embracing a critical technique focused on drawing texts from different poetic mediums and genres together — from conceptual erasure poetry to the avant-garde. For instance, du Plessis often brings seemingly disparate poems side-by-side in relation to each other in imaginative ways which prove themselves — to use her own adverb — uncollared from “illusion of essentializing definition,”7 the sapped status quo of literary criticism, and the siloed, alienating nature of the contemporary moment.
While the essays do not strictly focus on collaborative poetry in the traditional sense, they nonetheless prefigure and employ a new strand of collaboration in the abstract that opens up further, more expansive ways of writing about poetry critically:
[T]hese essays don’t centre on co-authored poetry. Neither are the essays written collaboratively in a material sense. Once collaboration is imagined as more fluid, organic, and open-ended, though, there are [evinced] strands of its presence throughout this book. [For example,] Oana Avasilichioaei and Erín Moure have co-written and translated each other, and here reside to one another in essays. [Whereas] reading Jordan Abel and Dionne Brand side-by-side weaves threads between their respective projects. Brand’s poetry demands ongoing return. There is a loose inclusivity, a flapping, between these three essays that opens towards further writing.8
The concept of “collaboration” both shapes how I’mpossible collab is organized and its underlying dedication to weaving threads between corresponding poetic outputs. Throughout du Plessis’s lean but ambitious book, contemporary Canadian poets such as Jordan Abel, Oana Avasilichioaei, Dionne Brand, Anne Carson, Kaie Kellough, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Lisa Robertson are included alongside each other — “resid[ing] to [ — or with — ] one another” in “loose”9 but ultimately generative ways that open new, expansive ways of writing about the country’s emergent literary scene.
Perhaps the most daring and topsy-turvy essay is one titled “No Collab” dedicated to Lisa Robertson’s 2022 republication of her 2004 chapbook, Boat (Coach House, 2022). In it, du Plessis confesses that she has not read Boat or, rather, “not in the traditional first page to last page style.” She explains:
[D]uring a crucial clearing of time, I fell sick and couldn’t read. As I lay in bed with Robertson’s book beside me, it dawned on me that the project of my book was to centre the give and take of poetry and scholarship, the collaborative standoff between reading and thinking. What if I didn’t read the book? [ . . . ] What if I pushed the tenor of my title to its logical limit? What if I could stage a collaboration of disequilibrium, one that deliberately exists in the space between author and author, between poetry and prose? By myself residing in the gap or the hut of my own making, I could create my own methodology . . . 10
“No Collab” reads more like an autobiographical essay about du Plessis’s relationship (or lack thereof) to Robertson’s text than a typical work of criticism. Yet, her admission that she has not read Robertson’s book opens a series of rabbit holes — namely, whether her inability to read the book might “stage a collaboration of disequilibrium.” By taking the reader down this pathway, du Plessis’s essay pushes one’s assumptions about what criticism is and its limits. Or, rather, in the essay she encourages them to wonder what might happen if there is a noticeable disconnect (“disequilibrium”) between the text and its observable reader. What if someone does not read a book but is nonetheless inspired by what they notice about it from a distance? By the way it lays on their bedside table?
“No Collab” is emblematic of both du Plessis’s distinct scholarly approach and the groundbreaking spirit of I’mpossible collab as a whole: by foregrounding her complex relationship to Robertson’s Boat, she asks the reader to rethink their own preconceived understandings about the broader relationship dynamic between text, author, and reader. And while some might choose to ignore this complexity altogether, du Plessis — in “No Collab” and within the entirety of her unique collection — accentuates it to forge a critical space of her own making worthy of attention from scholars and lovers of contemporary Canadian poetry alike.
