Cuckoo's Low Reel

Author: Nora Fulton

Publisher: Hiding Press (2025)

Cuckoo's Low Reel is a collection of poems in two registers.

The first register is a minimalist, serial poetry composed using a disassembled journal of weather, movement and correspondence kept between December 2021 and April 2023. The principle object of meditation in these pieces is the reel, a rhythmic form for fiddling commonly found in both Nova Scotian and Quebecois traditional music: conventionally one finds in a reel a pair of simple patterns which are played together in turns for the sake of dancing, for as long as the endurance of the fiddler and those who dance can hold.

The second register is that of the occasional poem, and specifically the ode and the anti-ode. These pieces take as their objects friends and family, lakes and hydroelectric dams, recipes and auctions, seasons and holidays, as well as birdsong - each object is given in two poems:, one of praise, and one of declamation.

There is also an additional, unnumbered register.