Farhang Book One by Patrick Woodcock
ECW Press, 2023
Patrick Woodcock’s new book of poetry, Farhang Book One, is brimming with energy on each page. I am hesitant to use the extremely unpoetic word packed, but this is a book packed with incredible poetry, each poem containing numerous quotable lines and stanzas. The structure of the book is also unique. Its ninety-nine poems are divided into five sections and move throughout fifteen countries. Each poem is twenty-eight lines long (one full page) unless Woodcock needed an extra line; if he did, he used the title as the first line of the poem. This is a fascinating approach. He used the entire page as a canvas. From the striking cover painting by Mihail Chemiakin to the form and content, Woodcock has crafted the most fully realised book of poetry I have read in years.
Farhang, the Kurdish word for dictionary, is a book of celebration and lament. As Woodcock looks back over his thirty years as a migrant writer and educator, he writes about what he has loved and lost. Sometimes it is to friends lost to suicide and at other times it is to friends lost to cancer. Within these eulogies Woodcock has written some heartbreaking lines:
Before it is my turn, tell me, did you find the tonic
for what you fled? Was the pavement dear, tender?
(“Michael’s Dive”)
But there was an ugliness we didn’t see—seeds
were being planted where they shouldn’t be—in towers,
trombones and skulls, tearing down our ladders,
grounding helicopters, dead weighting our wonder.
(“On the first day Kristjan welcomed me, molten rock,”)
Farhang Book One begins in Poland and ends in the arctic hamlet of Paulatuk. Between these bookends, Woodcock moves us through 15 of the over 50 countries he has lived in or visited. Some of these countries such as Russia, Iceland, or Colombia might be common tourist destinations—although Woodcock is certainly not a tourist, and his poetry clearly proves this point—but other locations such as The Kurdish North of Iraq or Bosnia and Herzegovina are certainly not. My lack of geographical knowledge and Woodcock’s skill as a poet make these poems even more fascinating and intriguing. The following lines about the Kurds Woodcock worked with in Iraq and a man in Bosnia and Herzegovina nicknamed Lemon who walked the streets of Sarajevo during the siege, are two of my favourites:
He crawled within the looted heads, to drink, defend,
decry and free, the messenger, the plundered horse,
from looters, ISIS and museum. See the four-winged
genie flee from Christie’s rapist lunacy.*
How many Kurds he waved to then, were deserted,
left to rage, filmed on fire within a cage?
(“Act I”)
…roaming the streets until a tinge
of yellow appeared in both sniper and sky,
forcing some to adjust their telescopic
and patriotic views.
(“Lemon’s vaudeville”)
In Patrick Woodcock’s Farhang Book One, the poet shows that his dedication to his craft is as important as those who inspire it. It is a book that covers an incredible distance both physically and emotionally and is well worth the time and effort of the reader—especially considering the decades Woodcock invested in living and creating his verse. I can’t remember the last time I was this moved and inspired by any book of literature.
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Lisa Lipke is a writer working on her second book of poetry, More ice please. When not writing, she loves walking with her dog ‘Nails’ around Montreal.