Diversion is the seventh volume of poetry from the former poet laureate of St. John’s, George Murray. As usual, he’s pushing the envelope: The idea is to reposition poetic inspiration from the tranquil channel of quiet musings to the infusion of multi-media platforms.

Thus, a cacophony of sources is distilled into a disciplined voice with a tight, juxtaposed, tumbling Jacob’s ladder configuration. The collection’s title itself indicates deflection and bypass. The wordplay starts with the titles, all hashtag inversions of some colloquial saying: “#DaydreamBereaver”, “#HookLineAndSinkHer”.

Each line of poetry is as separate as an egg around its yolk of terse observation. Taken together they form, not an omelet exactly, but a Newton’s cradle of propelling themes: Sex, games, textual linguistics, the Muppets, outer space exploration, international strife. Each has its own intention and restriction; aphorism, pun, an incomplete thought; and each piece is configured to be more than the sum of its parts.

Diversion

by George Murray
$18.95, paperback, 120 pp.
ECW Press, 2015