The Principle of Rapid Peering

An astonishingly meticulous naturalists notebook in verse, Sylvia Legris' new collection takes a lyrical walk through the prairie habitats of her home, observing birds, moths, landscape and the seasons. A poet whose work is 'fizzing with ecological intellect' (Times Literary Supplement) Praise for Sylvia Legris'Sylvia Legris's Garden Physic is the most refreshing book of the year. These are poems inspired by plants and flowers, but we are far from "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!". An apothecary and an alchemist, Legris shows us a dense and mysterious garden of verse, arranged in carefully cultivated harmonies: "Drip a drop in an ear to diminish an ache." Everyone should tiptoe in: there's nothing around quite like it'Graeme Richardson, The Times'Sylvia Legris's vegetal music has a sharp, cerebral edge that combines Gerard Manley Hopkins's radical, spellbinding rhythm and Marianne Moore's satirical wit . . . Sensuous, brainy and cardiovascular, Garden Physic is a cutting-edge ode to plants, teeming with human knowledge and natural mystery, accompanied by gem-like illustrations by the poet'Kit Fan, Guardian'Fizzing with ecological intent . . . An impressive achievement - one facilitated by the poet's singular, "wild-thoughted" vocabulary'Isabel Galleymore, Times Literary Supplement Self-seeding windis a wind of ever-replenishing breath.-from 'The Walk, or The Principle of Rapid Peering'The title of Sylvia Legris' melopoeic collection The Principle of Rapid Peering comes from a phrase the nineteenth-century ornithologist and field biologist Joseph Grinnell used to describe the feeding behaviour of certain birds. Rather than waiting passively for food to approach them, these birds live in a continuous mode of 'rapid peering'. Legris explores this rich theme of active observation through a spray of poems that together form a kind of almanac or naturalist's notebook in verse. Here is 'where nature converges with words,' as the poet walks through prairie habitats near her home in Saskatchewan, through lawless chronologies and mellifluous strophes of strobili and solstice. Moths appear frequently, as do birds and plants and larvae, all meticulously observed and documented with an oblique sense of the pandemic marking the seasons. Elements of weather, ornithology, entomology, and anatomy feed her condensed, inflective lines, making the heart bloom and the intellect dance.Features drawings by the poet.