Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach

Robinson’s novel Monkey Beach is a text that, in its narration and various forms of description, makes the reader aware that s/he is slightly removed from the text and is placed as an outsider to the story it contains. In one such moment of description, a mapping exercise (5), Lisa guides the reader in finding the town of Kitamaat on a map of British Columbia. In this passage there is mention of confusion in the naming of the village of Kitamaat and the complications that the “official naming” of places poses.
Being interested in the act of mapping and its implications in the formation of identity, I recently created a poem heavily influenced by this part of Robinson’s novel. The poem, entitled Mapping Beaver People is written as a sort of instructional guide to the reader, outlining a journey down a river in and into the woods of Northern Ontario. I’ve blended the use of cartographic terms and words that allude to the reading and writing and tracing of maps with vivid imagery of the actual landscape that underlies the map—the landscape as I grew up knowing it. The juxtaposition of clear instructions and internal description serves to continually wrench the reader in and out of the poem, enforcing his/her position as outside the true content of the poem. Along with Lisa’s mapping exercise, this piece questions the authority of the map-maker and indicates that maps cannot fully display the truth of what they represent.

Maps of Beaver People
LEAH ROBINSON

Tucked into Belaney’s
Tales of an Empty Cabin
Unfold it, brush dusty crease
and place a finger on Severn Falls: docks
exposed to the wake

Trace river Northwest
to the bridge, spray-painted signatures peeling
(Be careful. From heights,
water is as hard as concrete)
but don’t stop
there.

Three inlets
downstream find the bay
clear, bottom’s easy to read

We called it Turtle (You write it in)
At Dinnertime Rapids
you’re not there yet
Reached Lost Channel
you’ve gone too far.

Shoreline, dock rots,
upthehill
don’t trip.

A burst of roses at the top
sloping forest and a pinwheel of legs

Trace it now,
Skirt northeast pond
beyond another pond
and another
and
you’ve gone too far.
here

mud-cake lodge
here
coordinates (You write them in)

inside
knees tucked under chin
I am
curling toes Due North
Which Way?

Archie Belaney and Jell Roll