Book review: ‘Trading Beauty Secrets with the Dead’ by Erina Harris

Trading Beauty Secrets with the Dead is the latest poetry book by Erina Harris, an assistant lecturer at the University of Alberta in the department of English and film studies. Trading Beauty Secrets with the Dead is home to both verse poetry and lyric essays. The topics explore feminism, history, and nonsense in a jumbled culmination of rhythm and rhyme. 

The book is arranged alphabetically in a collection of letters. Thanks to the format, I felt like I was sifting through old letters in an attic. Each letter felt disjointed yet contributed to some larger conversation I needed to uncover with time. 

Women are central to each poem. Whether directly or indirectly, living or dead, doll-sized or giantess, this recurrence creates cohesion over time. Apart from women themselves, there are women-adjacent items such as pincushions, dolls, and crinoline. The poems explain these items’ historical significance and women’s treatment. My heart wrenched as I read WE TOOK OUR BEARINGS FROM THE DOLL which tells the story of the Egyptian woman Ptolémaïs. She was pursued by Sarapammon who wished to bind her to him with a spell out of “love” akin to cruelty. It reminds us of what the women of the ancient world endured. (“Sarapammon prayed that his beloved Ptolémaïs be taken, led, / Be brought to him, forever loving and submissive unto only himself. / And in this, / That she be bound by death”).

Another interesting aspect of the collection is the variety of different poetic structures. Some poems are more standard lyrical pieces, such as Letter A. However, Letter H reads like a script, following the dialogue between two girls named Olivia and Chloe. Collections within collections, poems within poems — each poem echoes the sounds of another. The shifting of both structure and topic gives the collection a multifaceted feel. It almost refuses to be defined, and demands you accept this. 

I cannot stress enough that many of these poems are nonsense, which is precisely the point. One of the epigraphs at the beginning of the collection reads, “And nonsense more nonsense is sullen,” which informs the reader to prepare for serious nonsense. Harris begs one to consider what it means to make sense. Nonsense poetry, however, is not for everyone. I found myself frustrated when trying to read sentences such as “Long, on a loop, Lotti’s Lollipop Lottery, carnivalesque, can it liberate Labourers.” However, the poetry achieved its goal of being nonsensical. 

As they say, one must know the rules to break them. I eventually gave up trying to make logical sense of what I was reading and let the poetry’s rhythm pull me along.

In the end, Trading Beauty Secrets with the Dead connects the people of today with the women of the past. What appears to be mere nonsense on the surface is, in reality, nonsense with a purpose.