Acting Beautiful 

“Other entanglements” is the first of many phrases I wrote down while reading Meredith MacLeod Davidson’s pamphlet Transpiration from ignition press. More than a codex of nimble word networks, Transpiration is impressive in its ability to both sound beautiful and act beautiful. How can a literary work act beautiful? you might ask. In the therapyverse, many of us become hung up on words versus actions. In relationships, in setting goals for the new year, in deciding whether literature is really worth all the trouble. Whether it’s fundamentally changing anything. I would argue that Transpiration is a work to look toward when contemplating the metaphysics of writing. MacLeod Davidson feeds words into a spinning wheel and then uses the yarn to move readers to action, even if that action starts as a question. Who am I while reading this? Where do I come from? Where could I have come from? Who is we? This is acting beautiful.

Ecology of Craft

Formally diverse, the nineteen poems that comprise the pamphlet play on Macleod Davidson’s variety of strengths. I was particularly drawn to the author’s remarkable couplets spread throughout the piece: when I come back to the water, will the river still ripple/ at height, will there still be birds? (from the opening poem, “Deltaville”.) This word ripple arises again and again, as though MacLeod Davidson has plopped an obsessive little stone into flat water and waits for its frequencies to lap at every poem. The binding of this pamphlet is gilded water. It is of my two favorite things: water, and winter. From “The Forest in Winter:”

Snowcastles bled from our fingers in terrifying dribbles

of ice. Like sand, we moved closer together when wet

and further apart when dry.

MacLeod Davidson’s craft feels like a queer topological experiment. The poems are punctuated by disruption through both stanza and elemental exposure. The brumal geometry of the pamphlet is a delicacy: well-structured line breaks are taunted by an underlying, slippery silliness. Many of the individual stanzas function as mini-poems. A pleasure!

Curious Hymnal

The asks of the poems in Transpiration are xylophonic, reverberating, crawling into my ears. Much of this pamphlet strains to wander, in both footfalls and words, without consequence, but MacLeod Davidson is too smart to let it get away from itself. Curating abandoned Americanisms in a wide world of sorrow, we are taking more than pictures and leaving more than footsteps. We are exploding in Barcelona where love goes to drown, peaking in Colorado where the lack of air becomes yogic, power-walking quickly enough to forgive our lovers their soils. From knuckle-tattooed grandfathers to orca fashion trends, the realities of Transpiration overtake the imaginings. Read this as though you are taking a walk, or opening a book of worship. Read it as a forgiveness ritual. Sure, therapists dismiss the word should, so I demand you read this collection. 

TRANSPIRATION by Meredith MacLeod Davidson, ignitionpress, £7 UK