Cecily Nicholson, Crowd Source

 

those eyes
lined in laughter 

fawned
from the floor up 

understory
as the
            flies
I hike
carrying my body 

to elevation
to rest 

a col between
two sisters’
snowy peaks 

the alpine air
quality up close 

trace elements

ancient
volcanic vents

Thefifth full-length poetry title by Vancouver poet Cecily Nicholson, following Triage (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2011), From the Poplars (Talonbooks,2014) [see my review of such here], Wayside Sang (Talonbooks, 2017) [seemy review of such here], which won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, andHARROWINGS (Talonbooks, 2022) [see my review of such here], is CrowdSource (Talonbooks, 2025). According to the back cover, Crowd Source“parallels the daily migration of crows who, aside from fledgling season,journey across Metro Vancouver every day at dawn and dusk. ContinuingNicholson’s attention to contemporary climate crisis, social movements, andBlack diasporic relations, this is a text for all concerned with practicingecological futurities benefitting corvid sensibilities.” While fellow BritishColumbia poets such as Kim Trainor, through A blueprint for survival: poems (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2024) [see my review of such here] and MattRader, through his FINE: Poems (Nightwood Editions, 2024) [see my review of such here], focus their conversation through the lyric around climate andwildfires, or Manitoulin Island poet sophie anne edwards, through Conversations with the Kagawong River (Talonbooks, 2024) [see my review of such here], focusesher climate conversation as a lyric study around a particular river, Nicholsonfocuses her own lyric conversation, her own particular study, through climate,colonialism and urban crows. “on the grounds / two of us stop to watch / acampus corvid of the oaks / right a small container still full / of dipping sauce,”she writes, as part of the book’s fifth section, “garbage, all of us /providing so much garbage // invisible until I am seen / in proximation [.]”

Heldas a book-length suite in thirteen numbered lyric sections, Nicholson’s extended,expanded sequences are stitched through fragment and ongoingness, stretching asingle line along a book-length thread. “to realize what’s common / pause forthe count / and continuity / keep time,” begins the seventh section, “blackbirdsare common / in the thousands / mythical / about this femme’s feet [.]” Shespeaks of crows and through crows, setting all else to a foundation of corvidsacross spaces occupied and altered by human activity. Nicholson’s lyrics, hersmall points and moments, accumulate across great distances, holding eachmoment in relation.

Late Pleistoceneblackbird
families separated by glaciers
over fossil-rich chalkbeds
prior to human settlement
Northwesterners 

in the Pacific Northwest
mainly kept to coastlines
beaches and seafood
in particular whelks 

back then blackbirds
fashioning beads
onyx of perceptive eyes
abalone primer infeathers
early years alert toarrivals

Detailedand delicate, there is something of the lyric study approach in Nicholson’s CrowdSource comparable to American poet Lorine Niedecker’s own approach through LakeSuperior (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2013) [see my review of such here]. As such, Crowd Source exists as a book-length poem fueled byresearch, observation and study, but propelled by language. “I am traffic,always looking to the sky,” Nicholson writes, as part of the sixth section, “bracedfor / aggression [.]” Or, two pages further, as she offers:

the nature of sources isto attribute citation
sources may form orsignify communities
wooded area intermittentcreek industrial
high-tech office parkpoles used for perching
trees: cottonwood, alter,yew, cedar, fir
in a riparian channelharbouring a deep V
inward, to the earth,through to old aquifers

first the waiting-for-kids-to-be-bornseason
fledglings fight to makeflight in the blue
whole as families unlikeour voided families
return each night to gatherin conference
learning the lay of theland likely close to
four or five before establishingor inheriting
relations in firm but opaquecommitments

Nicholsonarticulates relation and interrelation, offering the myriad ways in whichelements of the world connect together, held in place, at least here, inlanguage, from climate, capitalism and human occupation, all seen through thewisdom of crows. “one of the greatest spectacles / the city ever sees,” shewrites, to open the ninth section, “twice daily most seasons / dawn to dusk inlotic spectacle // quantum listening / with an innate sense of numbers // contourssensing a line / between the earth’s magnetic field // synthesized de novosurviving / billions of years as memories / stored in cells [.]” She writesblackbirds and grackles, crows and Vancouver’s SkyTrain, weaving quoted languageinto such meditative lengths as a kind of day book, riffing off moments andsources, crow activity and colonial impact. Or, as she writes to open the self-containedpoem “The Still,” set at the end of the tenth section:

descends into the heart
of its colonial name 

night grows dark as itdoes
and they are 

finally, the same colour
as the sky 

slightly orange

glinting, even asleep
they are 

wind chimes
and weather vanes