Science Fiction Saint
Science Fiction Saint, by playwright and poet Nancy Jo Cullen, investigates the space between a more traditional lyric line and the experimental use of form and language. A provocative work that shimmers with risk and offbeat humour.
Awards/Award Nominations
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award
Shortlisted for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award
Shortlisted for Alberta Book Awards Trade Fiction Book Award
Reviews
The poet has a real gift for juxtaposition, setting different language registers against one another, punning, and generally torquing up the language of the quotidian in interesting and unexpected ways… The leaps are adept, exciting, and often amusing, even, occasionally, breath-taking. ~Richard Stevenson, The Danforth Review
Cullen gives us front row seats at what Seigfried Sassoon called “the great theatre of the self”. Her work is a series of turns and pirouettes, leaping from childhood trauma, to sexual exploration, to the divine, to the possibilities of loving with one’s imagination, and back again, all without missing a beat. ~Alexander Rettie, Alberta Views
There’s a questing and multidimensional mind at work as the poems explore a real mix of subjects, from surviving girlhood to working in the small-town tourism industry to seduction. ~Harry Vandervlist, FFWD
Though an account of sainthood in other than the usual settings, Science Fiction Saint is still a story of triumph over the hells created for us in the violence and expectations of others. In both form and content, Cullen’s poetry is a sassy, assertive attack, irreverent in the way that all who question tradition remind us what it is to be human and strike out at what holds us back. ~Alberta Book Awards Jury
Just under each of these poems, invisibly audible, runs a camouflage of song. We can hear the words of heaven and hell, of the rites of passage, of sexuality, but what we really listen to is the song. Nancy Cullen uses her attentive and tuned ear to not only explore the obvious content of one’s own living but to literally tune into the hum behind the thought. These poems are what the imagination sounds like, the harmony of noise, those “chunks of whatever wasn’t vacuumed” after the confession. ~Fred Wah
Science Fiction Saint is a tightly woven collection of poetry filled with dynamic imagery. In its immediacy, the oral tradition meets the page in a playful celebration of life in the twenty first century. The reader is propelled between the lyrical and post-modern line as Nancy Jo Cullen speaks of a woman’s journey that questions, “What is holy?” all the time debunking myths that limit the possibilities of spirit. This first collection rockets. ~Sheri-D Wilson
Samples
personally
i want to remember my body is a temple floss my teeth
between you and me, i think of my teeth as representative of my adolescence: my terrible effort toward perfection, my first failure(s).
i do not dream of my husband. i dream of my past lovers & sometimes their sisters. i dream of them in pajamas that don’t fit.
i must be confused about my sexuality, these dreams of men and women and their sisters. certainly i have enjoyed penetration and the fat tongues of men. i think it is funny to say i am a gay divorcee, although it still comes up in my dreams that i am concerned about hell.
in the dream where i gave up women another man was my baby’s father and i instantly longed for all things lesbian, in particular the gossip.
but back to my teeth. i had them straightened, for which i gladly paid top dollar, and when finally i bit into an apple it was as sexy as fingers.
maybe a little bit like eve’s first bite. imagine her desire, overwhelming enough to shun safety for information. a thin line of juice trembling on her chin. lilith’s little sister finally coming into her own
(later when looking a photos of eve in her youth her loved ones will flinch, shocked by the damage of such a short space in time. how then she was as beautiful as a fashion model. eve unrepentant as ever (the irony not lost on her) tells her children, “hell’s what you make of it.”)
when i wanted to be older i wanted to be like that. like leanne on the mechanical bull; serious, drunk, almost as good as urban cowboy & not unaware of the consequences.
strange cities
forget strange cities the shape of your mother's sunglasses when she turned to look the camping trip on the banks of the peace when you weren't yet & your sisters in their thick cotton swimsuits now it is Monday pantyhose grip the corners of your thighs cross & uncross the business of the day what was it your father held in his hand in that photo a fishing pole or a whiskey jack? assets + liabilities = the net worth of a life everything girl clatters past the corner of your eye bangs the photocopier fails to understand the delicate microchip how it functions best when not subject to her violent insistence tall as Jesus flight of fancy she is making the world safe for job costing centering the universe to hover here under diesel your father never held a bird in his hand it's how the wage draws you in each day you become more faxed jokes and girlie pictures why don't women need watches? less from where you were that rocky beach on the banks of a river the last place your mother camped you are of this office beiged and voiceless except for the lilted good morning good afternoon you give good phone on Mondays you reconcile payables your sisters now a vague impression against the beach your are must earn a living this is where you live now you must forget the shape of your mother's sunglasses circa 1961
