Murakami's 'Invisible' Eastside

Last week I introduced National Poetry Month by highlighting two well established Vancouver-based writers. As the world becomes increasingly prosaic (or multimedic), poetry of any kind has been relegated to a niche market. Regardless, part of our mission here at Beyond Robson has always been to highlight those artists who operate a bit farther from the mainstream... and if there was a monument to poetry in the heart of Robson street, it'd probably be dedicated to Mr. Birney.

One local writer who finds her subject and self situated about as far from Robson Street or the Birneyan world of UBC as possible (demographically, at least), is Sachiko Murakami. Her debut collection, The Invisibility Exhibit presents an inside-out view of Vancouver street-life; a brilliant meditation on the enigmatic attitude this city has towards the Downtown Eastside. I've spent the last few days absorbed in the volume, and it's essential reading for every denizen of the Lower Mainland. Some poems and details on readings after the jump...

When I walked into Duthie Books the other day, Murakami's first collection of poetry was instantly thrust upon me as a must-have title. Any publication that garners 'staff pick' status at my favourite independent bookstore will have me jacket-skimming at least, and this one came presented as one of the strongest collections of local poetry to recently emerge. Sachiko Murakami received her MA from Concordia University, and has been published in journals like Fiddlehead and CV2. She lives and writes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and her debut was composed over the last few years in "the political and emotional wake" of Vancouver's infamous 'Missing Women' tragedy and subsequent trial.

The Invisibility Exhibit isn't about the Pickton murders per se, or even about life in the Downtown Eastside exclusively. Murakami is more interested in the spaces where the lives of downtrodden Eastsiders intersect with the Vancouver uptown; with the curious emotions at play when the media lights suddenly focus on the group who've been suffering from the same public's neglect. The poems draw inspiration from frontpage headlines, ferries, the art world, and anywhere else where Vancouver's disparate communities are forced together. One particularly effective piece focuses on a Halloween party at the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital.

While the subject matter could lead to some overwrought verse, Murakami's poetic confidence is on full display throughout and her willingness to experiment with images keeps the lines clear of cliche. It's truly a shame more of the public doesn't read poetry, as I'm convinced this collection captures the Downtown Eastside dilemma better than anything I've encountered.

American poet and author Charles Bernstein's essay "Against National Poetry Month As Such" has become quite well known since its publication in 1999, three years after PoMo was founded in the US, and is always bound to resurface come April. In it, Bernstein laments how poetry is dumbed-down, made more 'accessible' and sold to the masses. Easy poetry; clearly defined and with uplifting sentiment, made pleasing to tv-dulled palates, only to be abandoned at the end of the month... "National Poetry Month is about making poetry safe for readers by promoting examples of the art form at its most bland and its most morally 'positive.'"

Clearly, Bernstein did not have a PoMo-promoted book like The Invisibility Exhibit in mind when he penned his diatribe. The writing is hardly inaccessible (the verse will read smoothly for any fan of poetry, be they avid or amateur,) but the poems are far from 'safe'. And while the collection isn't unnecessarily pessimistic, it won't leave the average reader with a warmed heart; her words aim for candor, not escapism.

Take these brutally honest lines, for example; "Remember, on the mask of her face, a flinty grin/ you'd strike against if you carried/ anything harder than a word? Aren't you thankful/ for its disappearance?" and "you all press consensus to your chests;/ well, but didn't she have it coming." These come from a piece titled "Portrait of the First Stone Thrower as Missing Woman," one in a series of "portrait" poems.

Another from the "portrait" chain renders a post-game NHL player as a victimized downtown woman: "done up in drag he's half-grinning." Petty fights and overtime goals are made trivial; "That's past. Now he's just a man/ in a dress on the street." It's a beautiful evocation of the way in which a local tragedy like the murders momentarily shakes the spirit of every resident, forcing some kind of ephemeral social grounding; this person was my neighbor, this person was my kin. Or something like that. Here's another poem from the collection, I'll let you draw your own interpretations.

Skid Row

The name came from here, they say.
A road made from a black clatter of greased logs,

used for dragging timber down from Burrard Inlet
to the sawmill. On the skids meant down and out,

yet still not a no-go zone until Woodward's closed up
and the shoppers took dollars somwhere else
now called downtown. Now add an addendum,

Eastside. Elsewhere. The place where
a worker's toils sunk into the timber and stayed.

In the essay quoted earlier, Bernstein isn't entirely negative, stating that "Poetry is very much alive when it finds ways of doing things in a media-saturated environment that only poetry can do." That's exactly what Murakami's collection accomplishes; perfectly capturing the ill-defined relationship amongst citizens of Vancouver and the shifting, ambiguous emotions we all feel in the 'Missing Women's wake. It's a feat that could only be accomplished through poetry, and this volume deserves to be on the shelf of anyone who calls Terminal City home.

Murakami will be touring her book during April and May, with two readings currently scheduled in Vancouver. At 6:30pm on April 29th she'll be reading at The Railway Club as part of the Short Line Reading Series, followed by the Official Talonbooks launch at The Western Front.


The Invisibility Exhibit is available through local publisher Talonbooks and in bookstores Vancouver-wide, including the aforementioned Duthie Books on 4th Ave.

header photo by Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future of the beyondrobson flickr pool