HCSHR 8:2 – Mossy Alley

 Mossy Alley by Shannon Wallace

(Island of Wak-Wak, 2025) ISBN: 978-91-990469-0-7, , $27.50 (Amazon)

Review by Pearl Pirie

Mossy Alley is a 60-page book as one unit without sections. It is haiga, in the sense of illustrations, paired with haiku or senryu but the text isn’t superimposed on the images. As a reader, I tend to overlook images in books, but these drawing, collages, photos and paintings, are more emotive and communicative like Arshile Gorky than decorative.

The author, Shannon-Wallace, is Canadian-American. The book is printed by a Swedish press, Island of Wak-Wak, umder the imprint of Forests Unexplored. This press is not devoted to haiku, but a general poetry press. It is always sweet to see haiku appealing to the wider market as did Weather by Rob Taylor (Gaspereau Press, 2024).

The back cover astutely points out that it is not only the collage that collages. Capturing moments “that when taped together as a collage reveal what it is to live.”

One of my favourites is a relatable haiku in natural speech cadence, from a Thanksgiving haiku sequence, (p. 23).

    salad —

    somewhat unwelcome

    like that one relative

The poems are largely, but not entirely, in 5-7-5 but can transcend the hobble of set syllables. (p. 6)

    plastic bag on grass

    clear with a paper inside

    too unknown to feel

The leap of empathy for litter’s page to something inside crumpled and muted is moving. Can you feel something you can’t see. Can you love something fully without the words to define it? You love best what you know exists. 

I feel shy and uninformed to comment on art, but the abstract collages were absorbing. The drawings varied in tempo or as counterpoint to the writing. A pastel watercolour of leaves on rippled water in contrast to a fly covered mouse poem content. A collage on p. 16 of stamps, paper and plastic packaging set with a tranquil haiku,

    A tree nourishes

    Endless variant mosses

    And a child’s swing

It is refreshing to see haiku used to express the inexpressible, reach across the gap.