In a Tension of Leaves and Binding
Renée M. Sgroi’s second poetry collection, “In a Tension of Leaves and Binding,” grounds the reader in the setting of one single garden to become intimate with the movements of plants and animal life throughout a turn of seasons. In exposure to and immersion in the microscopic behaviours and inter-connection of the garden, deeper themes of grief, maternal love and existential being are expertly and gently pulled through.
Poetic conventions are decomposed and vine up through traditional and experimental form in giving voice to the miniscule and visceral, the reader entwines with the perspective of plant and ant to grapple with the human’s presence in and the author’s developing relationship to the garden. The poet mourns a lost life, she retreats to the garden to heal.
This collection of poetry becomes the garden itself, or the limits of what language can achieve to become an extension of it. I found this collection a space I know I can come back to for healing, for study, and for respite from the chaos of a mechanical and technological world. As well, this writing can push me to view my own garden differently, to become more and less present in it.
This poetry collection is important in the lens it provides of nature, our relationship with it and what we can observe of nature itself, the reciprocal workings of a garden. In this poetry volume, language becomes nature. “Pods of verbal clauses dangling from stems,” and “the system of nature, / like absended rivers, flows in the margins.” The author strives for a breaking open of classification and ordering, a space where the voiceless can be heard, “i’ll conceptualize you, differently now, wish for you a cross-pollination, new species, genus, a means to open categories, reorder sequences, add variety to classes, and write books which you could read, at bedtime, to unborn children.” A breaking open that turns perspective over, new growth emerges: “water to water and rain to rain/ we aren’t dust or clay, we melt.” Deeper in understanding of who we are as humans, in our extensions and separation of nature, in the collective and individual being of nature itself.
Renée M. Sgroi has published two poetry collections, her first collection, “life print, in points” with erbacce-press was published in 2020. Her current book, “In a Tension of Leaves and Binding” published with Guernica Editions, was one of the 2024 CBC Books list of poetry collections to watch. She has edited the poetry anthology, “Written Tenfold,” with Poetry Friendly Press. She is a certified Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) affiliate. Holding a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto, a Master of Science degree in Creativity and Change Leadership from SUNY Buffalo State University, she transfers an elemental lens of the world to her writing. She has taught for over 25 years in post-secondary education. Sgroi is also a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.
Her poetry has been published in yolk literary magazine, Augur Magazine, Funicular Magazine, Parentheses Journal, Literary Review of Canada, Pinhole Poetry, The Prairie Journal, The Windsor Review, and the /tƐmz/ review. Accolades include second prize in the 2024 Dr. William Henry Drummond contest judged by Keith Garebian, and semi-finalist in the 2023 Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Ellen Bass. She also won second prize in the 2022 Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize, and was the runner-up in the UK's 2020 erbacce poetry prize. I look forward to future works by the author.
Thank you to Renée M. Sgroi, Guernica Editions and River Street Writing for the complimentary copy in request for an honest review!
