For all intents and purposes, humour is unexplainable. And so, when it comes to making art, it’s a dangerous tool. Though if one can learn to manipulate it well, humour can unlock all sorts of impossible spaces. It can function as a key to topics, feelings and ideas that remain otherwise beyond limits. So it is with Geordie Miller’s Re:union, an excellent set of nimble-witted poems that turn and chirp in surprising ways, baiting the reader to press on beyond punchlines and sinkholes with a smirk. In this first collection, Miller cuts a wide swath, establishing an idiosyncratic voice that takes the reader effortlessly through a wide range of styles and subject matter: epistolary poems, formalist pageantry, Whitney Houston, death, baseball, contemporary philosophy, masturbation. What’s more, Miller does so with striking care and attention, never making reference for show, always leaning out over edge offering the reader a dizzying perspective rich with contrast and shot through with feeling.
This article appears in May 8-14, 2014.