Poetry. In her second book of poetry, Camille Martin breathes fresh life into the sonnet in a collection that is at once edgy and lyrical. The word "sonnet" comes from "song," and the musicality of SONNETS is not surprising, given Martin's background as a classical musician. These poems demonstrate a virtuosic range of approaches and themes; some are inspired by texts as disparate as nursery rhymes, theories of cognitive science, a history of street names, and her own dream journals. The chorus of voices in this collection sing confidently and fluently, proving the sonnet to be an ideal vehicle for Martin's love affair with language.
Author City: Toronto, ON CAN
Camille Martin, a Toronto poet and collage artist, is the author of SONNETS (Shearsman Books, 2010) and CODES OF PUBLIC SLEEP (BookThug, 2007). She was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, and spend her childhood in Lafayette, Louisiana. A classical musician from an early age, she earned graduate degrees in both music and English literature. After residing in New Orleans for fourteen years, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 she moved to Toronto, where she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University. Her current work-in-progress is a long poem entitled The Evangeline Papers, based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage and drawing on her recent visit to Nova Scotia to participate in an archaeological dig at Beaubassin and to research Acadian and Mik'maq history and culture.
Reviews and Other Links
author site
Rogue Embryo: author blog
rob mclennan
James Mc Laughlin in Stride Magazine
Carol Dorf @ NewPages
Marianne Villanueva @ Galatea Resurrects
“Camille Martin’s SONNETS bring the old form into the 21st century. In some ways, they are almost traditional; the speaker addresses a not-so-well beloved, a figure who occupies a ‘fraudulent elsewhere,’ an elusive lover or, more likely, another version of the poet herself. Identity theft is an issue here where we find ourselves ‘comatose in paradise but happy happy/feet! is this where I want to go? thrust/into an age unfavourable to being/a guest in one's own home?’ In these taut, fast-paced, self-aware poems, the lyric meets 21st century paranoia and sparks fly.”
—Rae Armantrout
“In the tradition of the chansonnier, this collection of sonnets encompasses the sacred and the secular, tracing ‘perfection and fear’ across borders we may never have known were there or near. Martin, the virtuoso, welcomes the unsafe, perpetually-tested beauty, declaring that ‘i’m so/accustomed to frozen rivulets on rocks/i don’t see them anymore./now I do.’ These sonnets offer a geography of the possible, invoking questions, challenges, songs of praise, and fact. The miracle of these songs is a precision that earns infinity of choice, ‘even as we dissolve into the wilderness of my voice.’ Camille Martin’s poems shimmer with repetition deft as sweetest breath mid-spring.”
—Sheila E. Murphy
“In Camille Martin’s SONNETS, language grips the synaptic parasails that are still caught in weather systems when the reading is over. There is magnificence in these poems, a poetic magnetic, propelling you to turn the page.”
—Jordan Scott