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Stereoblind
Using a wide variety of subjects (from Tinder to pharmaceutical research testing methods) as jumping-off points, Emma Healey’s provocative new collection of prose poems, Stereoblind, explores the urgent themes of feminism, mental illness, sexuality, artistic practice, alienation, connection, technology, and time. In the world of these poems, the past, present and future seem to overlap. Things exceed their limits, facts are not always true, borders are not always solid, and events seem to write themselves into being. An on-again off-again real estate sale nudges a quartet of millennial renters into an alternate universe of multiplying signs and wonders; an art show at Ontario Place may or may not be as strange and complex (or even as “real”) as described; the collusion of a hangover and a blizzard carry our narrator on a trancelike odyssey through Bed Bath & Beyond. “It is a thrill to be alive in a world like this, where every problem has a multiplicity of solutions, an honest light spread evenly across them.” The lived and the written seem almost contiguous in Emma Healey’s anxious, skewed, but familiar universe, the poems rife with an intense species of hyper attention John Ashbery once described as “the experience of experience.” Using the prose poem as their home base, these poems construct an inventory of ontological disturbance ― one that is fraught, honest, playful, complex, and incomplete all at once.
112 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2018
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About the author
Emma Healey
3 books22 followersEmma^^Healey
EMMA HEALEY’s first book of poems, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by ARP Books in 2012. Her poems and essays have been featured in places like the Los Angeles Review of Books, the FADER, the Hairpin, Real Life, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Walrus, Toronto Life, and Canadian Art. She was poetry critic at the Globe and Mail (2014–2016) and is a regular contributor to the music blog Said the Gramophone. She was the recipient of the Irving Layton Award for Creative Writing in both 2010 and 2013, a National Magazine Award nominee in 2015, and a finalist for the K.M. Hunter award in 2016.
EMMA HEALEY’s first book of poems, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by ARP Books in 2012. Her poems and essays have been featured in places like the Los Angeles Review of Books, the FADER, the Hairpin, Real Life, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Walrus, Toronto Life, and Canadian Art. She was poetry critic at the Globe and Mail (2014–2016) and is a regular contributor to the music blog Said the Gramophone. She was the recipient of the Irving Layton Award for Creative Writing in both 2010 and 2013, a National Magazine Award nominee in 2015, and a finalist for the K.M. Hunter award in 2016.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 12, 2018
I love the way Healey's longer pieces play with time - the way moments loop back and stack on top of each other and resurface in a different context. There's a few mentions of palindromes, and she's done something similar in the way the book as a whole functions, where the end and the beginning echo each other and the repetitive quality feels similar but different.
June 12, 2018
gorgeous!!!
July 8, 2023
favourite author of the year
February 21, 2019
poetry that brings to mind a sonic landscape .... revealing a world with several interlocking layers of events and meanings and sounds ... so genius
January 7, 2023
Devouring this book of poetry mostly on Toronto's subway felt site-specifically appropriate. Her articles are compelling & expansive, and these poems extend that. Exploring varied themes with grace and focus, making them easier to see from all sides. Poetry is still hard for me to sink into, I am less practiced with it, but her book is well worth the effort.
"Sometimes I worried that a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the world was what made time do what it did to me. In moments of deep self-pity, I imagined the inside of the brain: the bight tangle of wires hanging loose at the ends, the spray of useless sparks when I tried to understand the distance between one thing and another."
"Maybe the only metric is attempt: what can be held by you.
What you can stand to hold."
"Later, on my way home, I'd stand below and stare at signage - like OSSINGTON TIRE with its lightning and time, or GALAZXY DONUTS with its galaxy - and think I'd failed my life so often by assuming it had nothing left to teach me. In these moments, I could see the other world that shimmered just below the surface of this one. It was so close, I wondered why I couldn't see it all the time."
"You said that pain works this way too, can be a bridge or split the signal for a second, lets this near-forgotten thing return to where it came from, where it perhaps belongs."
"Sometimes I worried that a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the world was what made time do what it did to me. In moments of deep self-pity, I imagined the inside of the brain: the bight tangle of wires hanging loose at the ends, the spray of useless sparks when I tried to understand the distance between one thing and another."
"Maybe the only metric is attempt: what can be held by you.
What you can stand to hold."
"Later, on my way home, I'd stand below and stare at signage - like OSSINGTON TIRE with its lightning and time, or GALAZXY DONUTS with its galaxy - and think I'd failed my life so often by assuming it had nothing left to teach me. In these moments, I could see the other world that shimmered just below the surface of this one. It was so close, I wondered why I couldn't see it all the time."
"You said that pain works this way too, can be a bridge or split the signal for a second, lets this near-forgotten thing return to where it came from, where it perhaps belongs."
August 18, 2019
One of a number of poetry books we borrowed from our friend Anna! I should get around to another one soon, this one was really good. It's always nice to read good poetry that happens to be local, and definitely the longer piece about getting renovicted hit me right between the eyes (although so far our landlord hasn't been like that, touch wood). My biggest frustration with myself about not reviewing stuff promptly on here is that I forget the details of the work and of what I thought, and I feel like that's just exacerbated with poetry; I know I liked it a lot, and I remember some of the feeling of it, but I'm a bit short on details. Maybe I should just reread it.
March 8, 2018
The Toronto millennial experience in free verse. It's all there: shitty landlords and renovictions, mental health issues and distance in friendships, Tinder and the awfulness of online dating. While the text sometimes found a genuine rhythm, I found myself longing for slightly more lyricism to compliment the imagery. Otherwise an enjoyable and evocative collection.
March 26, 2018
The Toronto millennial experience in free verse. It's all there: shitty landlords and renovictions, mental health issues and distance in friendships, Tinder and the awfulness of online dating. While the text sometimes found a genuine rhythm, I found myself longing for slightly more lyricism to compliment the imagery. Otherwise an enjoyable and evocative collection.
March 18, 2019
A well written book of poems that captures the imagination, and tells stories that are somehow familiar even though I have never heard them before. I Don't know much, but I do know that I would like to write like this.
May 12, 2019
It took me a little while to find my rhythm with this slim book of prose poems but, once I did, was impressed by the lyricism and depth. “The spruce predicting shadows in the driveway, how it croons and keens against the night in the key of future, denting, vantage, glass outside your bedroom.”
December 28, 2019
I'm at a loss for words. The writing is so gorgeous -- simultaneously lush and spare. I keep it by my bedside just to transport me into its surreal dreamlike world before I drift off to sleep. A beautiful exploration of the movement of time and how we operate within it.
May 18, 2018
A book about disconnection, dissociation and living a double life. Beautifully executed storytelling and structure that can be unsettling at times.
September 27, 2018
Blade Runner meets Tinder versus Ontario landlords, crystals, the space-time continuum, and standardized patient programs. Oof, this gave me shivers.
January 24, 2019
I really enjoy when a poet is able to use structure to emphasize elements and themes within their poems and this book does this well. A solid read that will leave you with a lot to contemplate.
May 25, 2020
Absolutely wonderful!!!! A dreamscape of melancholic whimsy!!!!!
September 26, 2022
Actual: 3.5/5
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews