The Better Part of Some Time

"The Better Part of Some Time" by Mike Madill is a "Don Gutteridge Poetry Award" winner. In this debut poetry collection, Mike Madill recalls poignant moments from childhood before diving headlong into his father's death. Through his grief, he and the reader ultimately discover acceptance and hope.

"No guarantee / a soul won't spill / instead of float", writes Mike Madill in his debut book, The Better Part of Some Time, setting an evocative and at times existential tone that carries throughout this raw and gritty poetry collection.

In the opening section, he recalls poignant memories from his childhood. With shades of Robyn Sarah's My Shoes Are Killing Me, he conveys the resilient but bittersweet nature of these memories, as in "Smile, they urge, / as if I'm currency", while "I swivel back and forth between / imaginary blue-lines" captures the often bewildering demands of growing up.

The middle section's poems share Madill's struggle with the death of his father. Combined with his clinical depression, he was left feeling overwhelmed as to how to face this crisis, much less the world anew. He captures a striking depth of loss and confusion without veering into melodrama, making it reminiscent of Tim Bowling's The Witness Ghost or Richard Harrison's On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood. He honours both his father's strengths and his quirks despite his grief, paying tribute to the man's enduring sense of humour, even while facing the challenges from multiple diagnoses: "It was the old you again, cracking jokes, / pulling your Crazy Guggenheim / face at us in our Isolation gowns."

Embodied in the final poems is a renewal of hope borne of experiences lived far more fully since Madill's 'dark night of the soul', calling to mind Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. Having learned to embrace the darkness, he deftly traces his journey to maturity and greater self-awareness. Discovering he is able to not only persevere, but adapt and grow as both a writer and a man, he finds a new kind of freedom, evoked in his lines: "Embrace the blackness, / squeeze until the light / bursts from pores / and the fear of falling / falls away."

With an engaging and grounded style, these poems will resonate with anyone who has struggled with depression or knows a loved one who has, and prove that, yes, the world will continue to spin, even if not as we might expect. Mike Madill shows us what it means to be human, with adversities to surmount as well as those moments worth celebrating.