Powell River resident Allan Brown has published his twenty-fourth volume of poetry, tellingly titled Before The Dark, and issued by Leaf Press of Lantzville on Vancouver Island.
     The book is dedicated to his late wife Patricia, his companion on the poetic journey that has been his life for more than forty years. The dedication page also bears the citation from Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti ‘the sky with its many voices.’ The dedication reads: ‘for Pat (1932-2011) with her head in the sky and her feet on the pedals.’
     Whether he calls it from the sky or collects them from the ocean shore, Allan Brown has created startling new work, evoking words out of the quotidian and recent sorrow of his life to create fresh new works of art and intriguing processes of doing so.

     Powell River resident Allan Brown has published his twenty-fourth volume of poetry, tellingly titled Before The Dark, and issued by Leaf Press of Lantzville on Vancouver Island.
     The book is dedicated to his late wife Patricia, his companion on the poetic journey that has been his life for more than forty years. The dedication page also bears the citation from Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti ‘the sky with its many voices.’ The dedication reads: ‘for Pat (1932-2011) with her head in the sky and her feet on the pedals.’
     Whether he calls it from the sky or collects them from the ocean shore, Allan Brown has created startling new work, evoking words out of the quotidian and recent sorrow of his life to create fresh new works of art and intriguing processes of doing so.
     Allan Brown’s way of making poetry seems transparent, as though you are looking through the window of a department store window, observing as closely as you like the window dresser putting the final display creatively together. And yet, exactly how and why he does it is not so transparent.
     He displays this contemplative stance where he makes friends with the words that are given to him in any situation. Words seem his best friends and he is comforting with them so that they render an unguarded eloquence of personal revelation that is captivating, and also endearing somehow.
     One is benefitted by leaning into his cultivated sensibility as a writer, spending time with his work. This ‘bending into’ is honoured by benedictions. Take for example his understated homage to his late wife by a homely meditation on her waiting bicycle, stored in their shed.

Bicycle in the Shed
  for my dear cyclist

‘It’s a kind of waiting, I think,
a place to be in for awhile;
the shed, of course, and the bike too,
confidently at home here,
occupying its space by the wall …’

     He is standing before the dark waiting for the dark to lift, to be after the dark of her passing, a place to be in for a while.
     Allan Brown is confidently at home in such a place. All his poetry renders such a confidence which has evolved over the long search and journey that poetry has demarcated in his life. He can be observed both in his writing and in his personae observing, enjoying, celebrating, quietly commenting to indicate he has observed with a certain kind of care.
     Though born in Victoria himself in the 1930s, Pat and Allan came to live in an even quieter, smaller community, Powell River, suited to their contemplative ease of lifestyle, suited to their vocation and artistic and spiritual avocations.
     The bicycle seems an apt representative vehicle to the pace of life they have chosen and enjoyed, as a venue for their reflective deliberations of the journey. Now it is parked in the shed, participating in and symbolic of a kind of waiting.

‘It seems to be in and out at once,
 balanced between go and stay…
 a stop and a start again, as summer
 on a cycle path, coming to itself’

     This is the state of things in the poet’s life, but it is also merely a more measured phrasing of how he lives and has lived and has come to compose his poetry, waiting on what will be revealed in the next waiting. Truth in the poet’s calling, midst the belief that all is gift and all is given, to be recorded as such.
     Allan Brown has been loosely associated with Island Catholic News for some ten years now, since upon revisiting his home town in his own deliberate way, he picked up a copy at the public library and we began our dialogue and friendship and creative association. He has written commissioned detailed reviews for ICN and attended events here associated with the paper, such as Epiphany Explorations (see story under "OTHER NEWS" tab).
     Typical of many excellent poets, a reflective introvert by nature, when he reads his poems at public gatherings, a new personae emerges, one of a power and authority you could only suspect dwelled beneath his mild courteous manner. Slow to judge, always interested in new developments and fresh literary talents, Allan Brown travels through life in a manner unique to my experience, as though the literary muses have taken on a guardian angel personification almost specially for him and his poetic ilk.