by Lorne Daniel
Every writer explores a set of subjects and themes. Over a lifetime or through the progression of a writer’s works, those explorations will hopefully shift somewhat, and / or go deeper, yet for many of us, our natural curiosity and concerns bring us back over similar territory.
My collection Towards a New Compass, published when I was 25, reflects a young man with an interest in the broad sweep of history, the influences of place, and how individual lives are shaped within those bigger forces.
So, no surprise, decades after that early book, there is much in What is Broken Binds Us that looks at ancestral places, elders, trees and tributaries, and the complex weave of their lives. Also no surprise, much has shifted. Life has happened – I have different experiences to draw on. I write now with an awareness of historical forces like colonialization as fully enmeshed with the personal experiences of generations of people, living what might be seen as unremarkable lives.
My take on how families and communities evolve in the context of natural and built environments has been, literally, disrupted. Those disruptions become the underlying theme of What is Broken Binds Us – how expectations come apart, and how we find ways to reconnect the pieces, or at least exist alongside them. To sit with the brokenness.
After many years away from poetry, I was drawn back to poems by the need to respond to family crises (and the often-adjacent impacts of addiction, mental illness, conflict and estrangement). Over a period of almost thirty years, our family journey was one of twists and turns, plans and panic. At some point, I began chronicling that journey, not with publication mind, but as simple record-keeping. Over time, I began to see poems within the notes, and began to see value in sharing them with the many, many people who I knew experienced some form of those disruptions in their lives.
I tried for a while to publish the ‘Episodic Tremor & Slip’ series as a chapbook. Though I found no takers, part of the series appeared in a League of Canadian Poets collection of poems about mental health, and other poems from the series have been published in The Fiddlehead, ExPuritan, and (upcoming) an American anthology on estrangement, No Contact (Catapult, 2026).
The manuscript that became What is Broken Binds Us started to come together in 2019, more than six years before its eventual publication date. The poems about disruptions in the traditional narrative of family life became a core section, retaining the ‘Episodic Tremor & Slip’ title for the series. Soon, though, I found related themes in other work that was emerging.
‘In the Family Name’ is a section of poems about a deeper dive into ancestry. I’m fortunate to have four siblings who are interested in our family history, and we have made a number of trips together to explore the places where our story emerged. As we visited places, though, the story itself changed. We found that at least two (likely more) generations of one ancestral line were slave holders. We tracked generation after generation that crossed North America, part of the wave of colony-making over three centuries, through the Carolinas, Illinois, Oregon, and up into Alberta.
So the poems reflect disruption, again. Not only the disruption of our family narrative, but the tragic disruption of enslaved families and the generations of fallout from that.
On a personal level, I was also recovering from a life-disrupting major break: the literal break of my pelvis in a biking accident. With that trauma came the abrupt shift in life plans, from active health to recovery and adjustment. The poems in the book’s opening section, ‘Lessons in Emergency Preparedness,’ reflect the sudden disorientation of such an experience.
Resilience and repair become necessities. So do shifts in mental and psychological constructs. The fix-it mentality has to give way. Throughout the book, I explore ways of ‘sitting with’ difficulty. Finding some peace and calm within.
As in the past, I reflect on the elders – their places, their passions and their pathways. Writing now, I see different patterns in those lives.
With that, I’ll share the poem ‘Until the Seas Grace You.’ I wrote this poem in the flux of crisis response, but influenced by a family friend’s work with the Canadian Coast Guard, doing at-sea rescues. Here it is.
Thanks to The Woodlot for caring about poetry, and for providing this place to share responses to poetry.
(from: What is Broken Binds Us, University of Calgary Press, 2025)
Until the Seas Grace You
When the call comes it’s always hundred-foot waves,
search and rescue, transport and triage. Jump in,
keep heads above water until the seas grace you
with a few seconds between slams.
Halifax or Victoria, Atlantic coast or Pacific
the same. The call comes after months of not. Grab
your flotation devices and wade into wreckage.
This is no time for salvage. No point reaching
for that falling photo of the last family
Christmas gathering, the crusted laptop
once gifted. Simply stay out of the crashing debris.
By now, you know the rescue routine. No longer parents:
first responders, divers, geared up 24/7
ensuring the basics. Oxygen. Evacuation.
Then the dangerous calm, when you think
you can take a breather, before the echo
waves hit. Big swells of unpaid bills, stray
animals, abandoned roommates with needs.
Fatigue, resentment, recovery repeated
on an asymmetric cycle, as tides
respond to the pull of moons, festive
dates circled on the calendar. Patterns
of trauma, predictable and not, like a life. Over
these wrecks, don’t linger. Don’t
return expecting sunken treasures.
Lorne Daniel has been active as a writer of poetry and non-fiction for five decades. His most recent book, What is Broken Binds Us, was published by University of Calgary Press in 2025. Lorne is online at lornedaniel.ca
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