Poetry Embodying Nostalgia

Writer embraces the ordinary, trivial and mundane

The poems in Christyl Verduyn’s first collection, Silt, look at telling moments in the lives of women and men among places, times and identities. They look at the ordinary, trivial and mundane to glimpse the extraordinary instances of human experience and emotion.
Verduyn’s poetry in Silt has a simplistic style and in its simplicity breathes a sort of romanticism that is given to common and everyday moments in places like the kitchen, the playground and in the garden. Her writing embodies a deep nostalgia, whose voice still carries the sentiment of her childhood, blended with funny anecdotes and sometimes-melancholy moments, appealing to all our senses. Is also has another perspective and that is one of naturalism: the earth, the grass, the sky and her mother’s rugged strength that has stayed with Verduyn.
The poems found most compelling involve her mother who could eat a raw fish, eyes and all, and squeeze tomato worms with her bare hands. There is a beauty she expels in dark situations, as if she is just sharing human experience with carefully chosen words telling innocent and sincere stories that can be related to, universally.
Christl Verduyn teaches Canadian literature, Canadian Studies, and Women’s Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. Her research interests include Canadian and Québécois women’s writing, feminist and post-colonial literary criticism, multiculturalism and minority writing, life writing and interdisciplinary approaches to literature.

Publication Date: 2004-08-08
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