The blurb for Phil Hall's new book of poems, The Small Nouns Crying Faith (to be released in May) says the poems "talk frogs, carrots, local noises, partial words, remnants, dirt roads, deep breath & hope." The Small Nouns Crying Faith is highly anticipated: Hall's book of essay-poems, Killdeer, was the 2011 winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in English, and in 2012 won Ontario’s Trillium Book Award, an Alcuin Design Award, and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Previously, Trouble Sleeping (2001) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award, and An Oak Hunch (2005) was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

We are thrilled to have been given permission to include one of Hall's poems from his new collection, "Tweed," here.

Tweed

 The chewed-corn gaff of the mullein
      

its tall standard rising behind the wood-pile

 (between the wood-pile & the woods)

seems yellower as the morning darkens
      

 & the maples gather darkness into themselves

& clouds combine as overcast moil

 & the highest poplars tell of what’s to come

throwing their paper bangles up / letting loose

 their crepe-ribbon noise (braided loops

being pulled down after the party

 that was sleep)    such blinkered comfort to write like this

the supposedly-tender anthropomorphic wit

 of witness that is really a hiding-out      


under stupid traditions       while the ramps narrow

 in the tock yards


it is going to do a whole lot more than rain

Phil Hall has taught writing and literature at York University, Ryerson University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and elsewhere. Currently, he offers a manuscript mentoring service for the Toronto New School of Writing. Hall has recently been writer-in-residence at Queens University and the University of Windsor. In fall 2013 he will be an instructor at the Banff Cenre for the Arts, in the Wired Writing Program. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

-Phil Hall