Blog

Image:  “Looking at pictures Jeff took at Panama and since. He has some pretty good ones but the best is one of Christine looking out the porthole. I hope to get prints of a few of them.” (Jack Shreve journal entry, April 7, 1936, Tasman Sea)

Last weekend, Tom Wayman was on Pender Island reading from his latest books, The Road to Appledore (memoir published by Harbour) and How Can You Live Here (poems, published by Frontenac House).  Tom started the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union in 1979 and over the years gathered together numerous men and women who were writing about work. The group met, in various iterations as members came and went, until 1993.  As it happens, several former members of VIWU now live on Pender (Kate Braid, Zoe Landale and me) or nearby in North Saanich (Kirsten Emmott) – so we joined Tom at his reading. Afterward, we got together for a mini reunion at our local pub. So, for this week’s Wednesday Poem, here’s another one about work, from Waiting For the Albatross (Oolichan), a collection of poems I crafted using segments from the diary my father, Jack Shreve, wrote at age 21 while working on a tramp freighter during the Great Depression.

Luck


1.

The cat has been chasing cockroaches ever since supper – good luck!
When we hit the warm weather we’ll get bed bugs too!   Tough luck.

Robbie smashed three teeth on one of the funnel stays. 
Went ashore to have the dentist yank them.  Tough luck.

Last night cook cut his hand open with a meat cleaver.  Bled like a
stuck pig and had to have three stitches taken in it.  Tough luck.

Al found a great big worm in the soup! Bob saw a grub
in his biscuit.  Three of the boys found maggots.  Tough luck.

Len lost his little finger in the machinery.  What it didn’t cut
off it crushed.  Mate cut off the rest and sewed it up.  Tough luck.

Took a minute to sharpen my knife and my hand slipped, cut my thumb.
Mate said to get out the needle and cat gut, joking, tough luck.

One of the firemen was tight and tried to sell a pair of new boots he’d bought.
When he got no bids he threw them over the wall – tough luck.

Cameron was tight last night and fell overboard!
Jackass.  Lucky he didn’t drown.


2.

Don’t get me wrong about this trip.  I wouldn’t have missed it
for the world.  Too bad young Sullivan couldn’t get anything.
It makes me realize I was very lucky to get placed so easily.
Boys swapping yarns to-night; I don’t think I’d care for their
experiences, how they rode the rods, the rows they had.
While the work may not be interesting, it isn’t too hard;
I expected lots worse than I’ve had so far.  Don’t get me
wrong.  I wouldn’t have missed this trip for the world. 

About the poems:  Luck 1 is a ghazal, a form based on couplets that feature a brief refrain, just a word or phrase introduced at the end of the first two lines.  It is then repeated at the end of line two of each couplet.  The final couplet usually includes a signature, either the poet’s name or a pseudonym.  Luck 2 is a triolet, an eight line poem in which line one is repeated as lines four and seven, and line two is repeated as line eight.  In this poem, I’ve been very loose with what I repeated and where.  More about these and many other forms can be found in In Fine Form (Caitlin, edited by Kate Braid and me).