Sorry About the Fire
Colleen Coco Collins
Biblioasis, Ontario, 2024
Time Out Bookstore page

A clutch of short poems from Canadian/Odawa poet Colleen Coco Collins, Sorry About the Fire brings together a stream of acutely sonic, deeply felt observations drawn from natural and interpersonal phenomena.

With a careful, cutting pen and a predilection for off-kilter images, Collins’ poems manage to feel both spontaneous and indelible; tender and utterly vicious.

FAST DROGUES

admit them
these strange arrangements
these fast drogues in the
         name of constancy

pain eater put it aside
that harm dish

you are being welcomed
          to the reveille

everywhere    petrichor

everywhere
turduckens of joy
            and surety

Having never encountered the word ‘turduckens’ in a poetic context, I’m startled by Collins’ post-ironic framing; a knife-edge of earnestness and wicked surprise. ‘Strange arrangements’, indeed, reminiscent at times of Chelsey Minnis. From ‘Hem’:

the horse is a wardrobe
                  full of killers

                  and only you know

Collin’s offbeat image play never overwhelms; her carefully distilled lines generate gentle vibrations. Sparse stanzas resound with pealing vowel rhymes and sharp consonance at varying junctures. Flashes of Paul Celan’s precise yet dense economy echo throughout Collins’ phrases. From ‘Night Plow’:

Toothed bucket
come jabbing
through the bank

small thing

shrugged out
from under the aegis
of the sky,

swept backwards
              through death.

Possessing a depth belied by its short page count, Sorry About the Fire imprints on the ear and mind’s eye well beyond its end.Poetry Shelf Time out

Frances Libeau

Frances Libeau is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and bookseller based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Recent publications include Min-a-rets 15 (Compound Press, 2025) and Radicant (Hocken Collections, 2025). They work part-time at Time Out Books and order in a selection of poetry titles for the store.