total
There is a dance, a series of bodily movements, untamed and intuitive, that accompanies this poetry collection titled, “total,” by Aisha Sasha John. Published by McClelland and Stewart this year, there was an inescapable drum rhythm, or spontaneous musical rift that pulsed beneath the lines of text as I navigated through. Knowing that the author is also a choreographer and dancer could not underscore the innate sound and feel of the tone of “total.”
The cover of “total” pulled me in too. A wide pupilled-eye contracts as a beacon from the cover, microscopic and zoomed in, I would enter that eye and possibly feel the world from another’s perspective. To me, the cover also appeared like a burning sun with pock-marked valleys of golden rays, a black hole inferno. This poetry collection could be scorching.
Described by other reviewers as “contemporary mysticism, a lunar erotics of rage and grief,” the collection took seven and a half years to create. The everyday is transcribed and resists in its own existence the reader’s comprehension and expectation of what poetry is meant to do. “total” has been translated as “prayerfulness as claws out, eyes wet, throat open, eyes turned up and in.” Performative poetry, I admired that the text retains its power and cannot be unravelled or pulled apart easily. The author maintains autonomy, in making herself vulnerable by exposing the thoughts from inside of this pupilled inferno, Aisha cements her contours and stance, she does not lose it. I admire her for that.
As Aisha’s fourth collection, her readers will encounter lines in all-caps, fragmented lines that feel cut and arrive out of context. You might not get it, and that's the point. This collection is not about legibility or coherence, there is no clean narrative woven through, no easy over-arching exploration of thematics or even a play on semantics. The collection is transparent, as simple as the thoughts that brew up and boil over. Thoughts that are transcribed onto the page. Ultimately, this feeling of disorientation and lines that explode into our space out of the void, is intentional. With “total,” we will be forced to confront what we expect from collections of poetry and beyond, what we want from language and the artist will not easily be given.
“total” is comprised of 104 numbered poems and is divided into 8 sections: “Wolf/Nest/Peace of Meet,” “I am New to Evenings.,” “The Spirits in the Corner and the Cat,” “I am ‘Selfish’ and I am Rich,” “You’ve Called Faith ‘God’ and Doubt ‘the Devil,’” “But Then I Thought What is Wildness, or What Worth is Wildness, without the Structure of Devotion,” “‘One’s Personal History, Whatever Else it is, is a history of One’s Obedience,” and “‘I Do Feel Something Back Here, but it doesn’t feel like pain. It feels like Knowledge.”
Aisha Sasha John is a performer, choreographer and a poet. Her previous works include “I have to live” (McClelland & Stewart, 2017), a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, “THOU” (Book°hug, 2014), a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for and the ReLit Poetry Award, “The Shining Material” (Book*hug), and the chapbook “TO STAND AT A PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED” (Ugly Duckling Press, 2021). Dance is infused in Aisha’s being, performance as a space of connection informs her writing. Aisha is the inaugural Affiliate Artist at Toronto Dance Theatre. Her work, “The Pool,” made with the TDT ensemble will premier in the winter of 2025. Further, Aisha’s duet, “DIANA ROSS DREAM (Danse-Cité 22), performed with Devon Snell, has been presented in Montreal, Vancouver, and Rouyn-Noranda, and was developed during her 2019-2022 Dancemakers choreographic residency. Aisha’s first full-length solo work debuted as the “aisha of oz” at the Whitney Museum in 2017, and in 2018, iterations of the “aisha of oz” were presented at Montreal arts intercultural (MAI) and Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival. Aisha’s debut co-creation with fellow choreographer/performer Clara Fury will premier in 2026. Aisha has earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and her B.A. in African Studies and Semiotics from the University of Toronto.
In her previous works, Aisha felt obedience to legibility, “total” is a breaking free from that control of art and expression. I still question, how raw and fully transparent is thought to text in this collection? It would be interesting to know the creation process of this collection, the methodology of recording thought, and the choices made during editing and production. Is “total” recorded in a single take, a seven and a half year chronology? “HEY WHAT DO YOU GUYS DO WITH YOUR THOUGHTS?” (total) I wondered occasionally, is Aisha shouting at me?
Wake up Neo.
Thank you to Aisha Sasha John, McClelland & Stewart and River Street Writing for a complimentary copy in request for an honest review.
