Sprocket

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By (author): Al Rempel

Sprocket is a series of breathless prose-poems capturing poet Al Rempel’s childhood adventures spent roaming free in the idyllic setting of Arnold, BC, a small farming community tucked into the corner of Vedder Mountain, near the US border. Each poem presents a snapshot of one or two memories, sometimes involving the author’s siblings, his two “summertime only” school friends, or any number of other local characters. From climbing up the mountain “with handholds wet with moss and banana slugs” to finding the best way “to run full blast through a cornfield just before harvest,” Rempel takes his readers through an age where, as long as you were home by suppertime, you could go almost anywhere on your bike.

AUTHOR

Al Rempel

Al Rempel graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Education. In 2000 he attended the Victoria School of Writing where he began submitting poetry. Al Rempel has previously published two books of poetry, understories (Caitlin Press 2010), and The Picket Fence Diaries (Lipstick Press 2010). His poems have also appeared in The Malahat Review, CV2, Event, and filling Station, and in anthologies such as The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2011. He currently lives in Prince George, BC, where he teaches at a high school.

Reviews

A kaleidoscope of images in language running loose and free yet always with intent and narrative force RempelsSprockethurls us into the world of boys on bicycles who only stop to ask Where does the universe end A great delight that triggers memory and returns us to the wholeness of childhood

David Zieroth author offirst here and then far selected poems 19712024

In runon tumbles of full blast exuberance Al Rempel leads us in a gang racing through the greening superlatives of youth ThroughoutSprockets crackerjack prosepoems play reigns supreme because what kind of afternoon is it if you dont build harbours in the mud with the microbes and ditch weeds and bugs The unassumingly artful piling up of imagery subtly invokes reflection upon who we were in that distant pastSprockettakes us back to when the door to the future was wide open like we could go anywherereading it feels like an infusion of youth

Kevin Spenst author ofA Bouquet Brought Back from Space

Rempels poems wake up to a new ache in our bones waiting for the sun to light up our place in the world and transport us to lives lived outside from fields to forests train tracks to manure pits the base of mountains and streams swung across on the branch of a cedar This is a onceupon world of paper routes gocarts and gumboots peopled by those who spin their days through bike spokes or seem to be always running rolling through barbed wire fences into ditches as night closed in These poems invite us into this world until we too wonder what would happen to us and did the universe go on foreverSprocketreminds us that the fleeting ache and wonder of the everydayfloods frogs snakes scrapes and allcan be a plainsong divine

Laisha Rosnau author ofLittle Fortress

These poems are condensed blocks of runon overlapping narratives all phrases and lines moving in and out of scenes like poetic dream memories all the while creating amazing rhythms that carry one along toward those beautiful endings that often cast an unexpected perspective on the whole poem The poems move through childhood until one day the childs glove doesnt fit anymore and the sandbox is left behind

Patrick Friesen author ofReckoning