Michael Ondaatje returns to poetry after nearly 25 years
Sometimes a word associated with something fits in our minds so snugly that it is difficult for it to be anything else. But it is this feeling that gives us pause. And once shown in unfamiliar terrain, these very words become poetry.
The same could also be said for Michael Ondaatje. The world over, he has primarily been known as a novelist, most famously penning Booker (and The Golden Booker) winning The English Patient. It therefore comes as a surprise that Ondaatje was a poet to begin with. And so his latest poetry collection, A Year of Last Things, seems like a homecoming rather than a new venture.
As a constant traveller in the world who has inhabited various worlds, Ondaatje’s anthology features a myriad of objects and people, as well as a multitude of languages and motifs. Despite this, his poetry is not overly decorative or embellished and sticks to its simple themes of love, loss, and living.
Readers of Ondaatje’s work will also find some themes and motifs that have occurred in his fiction as well, such as an interest in maps, as well as recollecting the past. A Year of Last Things can therefore also be read as a way of looking at Ondaatje the author, and what inspired and fired the imagination of such a storied career.