Abstract

Oyster & Bear is comprised of both short traditional lyric poems, influenced by the Persian form known as the ghazal, and long conceptual prose-lyrics constrained by excessive uses of singular parts of speech (for example, prepositions or conjunctions) or other units of the English language (i.e., prefixes). As a collection, the poems explore themes of absurdity and loss in the context of human relationships and how the loss of a “you” can drastically change the nature of the “I”. What other images appear when one faces grief alone? What comes in to take the other’s place? In many of the poems or poem sequences, the speaker’s perspective shifts from preoccupation with the Other towards the strange, mythical, and, at times, delusional. Moving past the familiar “life is absurd,” and “loss is difficult,” Oyster & Bear rejects defeatism to ask what lies at the centre of our language and explores what it could be if it isn’t, as some famously suggest, lack?