Laura Farina wins the 2006 Archibald Lampman Award for her book This Woman Alphabetical, from Pedlar Press.
Named after the 19th-century Confederation poet, Archibald Lampman, the award recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry written by an author living in the National Capital Region. Often considered Canada's finest nineteenth century poet, Lampman worked for the Post Office in Ottawa until his death in 1899. His poetry is noted for its ability to immerse metaphysics in the details of nature, which he observed while hiking around what was then the wilderness capital of a new country.
There were eleven entrants to this year's competition:
Daniel Boland: Toward the Chrysalis (Stoneflower Press)
Ronnie R. Brown: States of Matter (Black Moss Press)
Tony Cosier: The Spirit Dances (Penumbra Press)
Laura Farina: This Woman Alphabetical (Pedlar Press)
William Hawkins: Dancing Alone (Broken Jaw)
Bing He: Alphabet Zen (TSAR)
Tom MacGregor: Directions to the Cottage (Wallbridge House)
Nadine McInnis: First Fire (BuschekBooks)
Seymour Mayne: September Rain (Mosaic Press)
E. Russell Smith: Spring Garland (BuschekBooks)
Andrew Steinmetz: Hurt Thyself (McGill Queens University Press)
Recently, entrants participated in a very special poetry reading at Beechwood Cemetery, the resting place of Lampman himself.
The judges in this year's competition were Sue Goyette of Halifax, Ken Howe of Toronto, and Sue Wheeler Lasqueti Island, BC. Honourable mentions go to Tony Cosier, for The Spirit Dances, from Penumbra Press; and to Andrew Steinmetz, for Hurt Thyself, from McGill-Queen's University Press. Thanks to all those who entered this year's Archibald Lampman competition. Special thanks also to this year's jury.
from ARC POETRY MAGAZINE
Friday, May 26, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
Writers Fest-Final Poetry Cabaret: Three Men Walk Into A Library
and blow the audience away. AJ Levin, George Elliot Clarke and Paul Muldoon, not to mention Stephen Brockwell, the host, had the audience in their spell.
Brockwell set the celebratory tone of the evening with his eloquent and enthusiastic introductions. One of the things I enjoy about the festival is that those who host are usually well-known local writers and we get the chance to see them in a role other than authors reading their own work.
AJ Levin was the first to read. The former Torontonian, now a Winnipegger, has just had his first book, Monk’s Fruit, published by Nightwood Editions. It was fortunate, and likely not accidental, that he came first. It wouldn’t be easy to follow the powerhouse of George Elliot Clarke or the charm of Paul Muldoon.
He began by reading some of his recent and unpublished poetry, explaining that after the book had been out for about twelve days, he was already sick of it. His poems were full of humour, something that seems to have been very common to the male poets reading at the festival this time around. In addition there were many classical allusions and unusual juxtapositions: in a poem called the World’s Largest Cabbage Patch Collection about bullies for example, he read of “fairy tale white snow” being packed down a child’s underpants.
Between poems, Levin shared small biographical notes, but didn’t go on too long in his introductions. If a poet’s intro to a poem takes longer than the poem itself to read, I’m bored. This happens more often than you would think. I enjoyed Levin’s humour, found his poetry to be very masculine in that there were lots of allusions to males and masculine imagery and past times throughout: Vikings, Shakespeare, Orwell, shrimp trawlers. There was very little mention of women in the poems he chose to read: one poem feminised a potato, another spoke humourously about female curlers.
Levin is obviously a very well-read poet and his work was strong, but somehow I didn’t feel involved in it. I haven’t read enough of it to know whether this would change. The danger of poetry readings is this temptation to evaluate based on encountering someone’s work only once, especially when faced with so much poetry at once, as one is at a writers’ festival as this one. The reviews of his work are excellent. Ken Babstock says that “Monk’s Fruit revels in language, syntax, and allusion."
Next on the stage was the man many people in the audience, including me, had been waiting for: George Elliot Clarke. People actually screamed when he came on stage. I think he is the closest thing to a Canadian poetry superstar we have. In the audience that night was his young daughter, Orillia, about whom he boasted had just been chosen to be the poet of her grade 2 class.
Clarke read bits from his play Quebecité about interracial couples, announcing that it will be produced for the Ottawa Fringe Festival by Jessica Ruano. Clarke’s reading including word play extraordinaire and rapid puns, delivered in an energetic manner that enlivened the normally quiet Ottawa poetry audience. A few years’ ago, Clarke came to the Tree Reading Series and did the same thing.
He also read from his latest poetry collection, “Black,” explaining that he loved this word because of its strength, referring tongue in cheek to “he had black designs,” and “black mail not black male.” One of the strengths of a Clarke performance is his sense of fun. You feel like an accomplice to his wit, and his playful criticism of politicians. You are on his side. That’s not an easy feat for a performer to achieve, but Clarke does so with ease and experience. It was a lesson for poets wishing to conquer a stage.
I loved his sound play: “slinked off whistling to drink drink drink” and the poignancy of his imagery: “snow cleansed everything but memory;” the muscular language “the surge of sun, lemony, cantankerous, warm.” It is always interesting to hear a poet read work about one’s own city. In his poems “La Vérité à Ottawa I and II,” he offers a portrait of our city. Clarke lived here for a number of years when he worked as an aid to an MP. Perhaps that’s why his political poems are so sharp and so strong. He read poems about former prime ministers Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau. I am hoping he writes one about Paul Martin some day, but what is there to say, really?
Next on stage was Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who did a reading on Beckett the day before and from what I understand, thrilled the audience. After the energetic Clarke, Muldoon’s pace took a bit of getting used to. His voice was soft and he had a bit of a lilt. When he read he turned to face different parts of the audience. It didn’t take long before we were all spellbound by his stories, his wit and his poetry, which was observational and full of insightful detail and pathos.
While he had prepared poems to read, he also took his cues from what the other two had read. For example, he chose to read a poem about turkey buzzards because Levin had a poem about the vulture and the dredyl. The poem was also about his sister who had died after the poem was written. Muldoon used a lot of near rhyme and internal rhyme in his work. Some poems were historical: he read one about the Ottawa tribe, for instance, while others were amusing—a poem disparaging the cheeps and bleeps of modern technology, which turned out to be a grasshopper. He read a strangely poignant poem about his dog, Angus, who bayed at the sound of a train, filled with mustard gas or Saran. He also referenced a lot of male heroes, including Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island, Diogenes and Blondin, a Niagara Falls daredevil. He read an amazing poem called The Loaf, which is published in Moy Sand and Gravel. The poem was full of detail and word play. He reminded me somewhat of Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage who came to the festival last year. He had a similar story telling style and, like Armitage, his poetry was more formal, more inclined to rhyme and traditional word play than contemporary North American poetry I’ve read.
The question and answer period that followed was one of the most animated and participatory Q&A sessions I’ve experienced at the festival. Brockwell began with questions from the audience. rob mclennan, finally getting a break from his host duties, opened the questions, remarking that Clarke was one of the few who writes overtly political poetry and asking him to comment. Clarke feels that everyone has the right and the responsibility to comment on political goings on. Brockwell asked the others how they worked politics into their poetry. Muldoon said that it is inevitable for anyone who is vertical and trying to make sense of their world to include politics. Some of his latest work while he’s been living in the States has been overtly political, which surprises him. He gave a delightful etymology of two words mentioned by Clarke: “Tory” which he said meant “highway man, robber and hunted person,” and “shenanigan” the Irish word for a cunning fox.
Levin approached the question differently, stating that language is politics, a system of code created to keep others out of the loop, quoting a linguist/philospher whose name I didn’t catch. Levin feels it is the job of the poet not to exclude people, but to include them in new ways.
An audience member asked the writers to discuss the notion that poetry was meant to be learned by heart and the lack of memorisation of poetry today. Muldoon said that one has to allow poetry to extend culturally. Many people have memorised lyrics, such as the songs of Leonard Cohen. Muldoon admitted to having a bad memory for even his own poems and hoped that this didn’t have anything to do with their quality. He continued more seriously that in the past poems were beaten in to students and that it would be better if poetry were more a part of our daily lives. When he expressed the idea that newspaper should contain a poem a day, the audience cheered. Muldoon made the exquisite point that poetry should be part of our ordinary existence, not some strange thing.
Clarke continued along the same vein, pointing out that people do memorise non traditional media such as hip hop lyrics, love poems and religious scripture. He said that in order to be a half decent wooer, you have to be able to lay down a love poem. He then recited the twenty-third psalm in demonstration.
Oni, the Haitian Sensation, changed the subject completely when she asked all three writers “if you were a fruit, what kind would you be, and describe the flavour.”
Levin referenced his book’s title, Monk’s Fruit, which has no flavour.
Clarke replied that this was obviously an erotic question and said watermelon.
Muldoon quoted a poem by Tony Harrison, “A Cumquat for Keats,” saying that his fruit would be bittersweet and have a different impact from one occasion to another.
Revisiting the earlier question about poetry and politics, syntactic memorability, and Carleton University’s Penn Writer in Residence, Amatoristero Ede commented that he felt contemporary poetry was close to the syntax of prose. His current editorial on Sentinel Poetry gives further details on his opinion as I can’t do it justice here.
Muldoon chose to address the memorability portion of the question, saying rhyming verse is easier to remember and advertisers have figured that out. Clarke spoke of the blessings of having many resources for poetry. As a teen, he carried a boom box and listened to the music of Springsteen, Dylan and Joni Mitchell, even admitting to being a victim of disco. All of these influenced his poetry, including the imagery of the blues, “I want to grind your coffee.” He argued that some poetry is closer to prose, discussing the Language Poets, Pound’s “The Cantos.” He recommended that nothing be dismissed as being useful for poetry.
Brockwell asked a question about how each poet wrote and what instrument they used. Muldoon uses a PC because he finds it hard to write with a pen and his handwriting is poor. He used a typewriter when he was a teen, has always been concerned with how a poem looks on a printed page. Levin uses a pen, sometimes a typewriter and rarely a computer, claiming to be a sporadic thinker and finding the pen handier for clusters of thought. He doesn’t like to have to turn something on and wait for it. Clarke brought out a small Chinese diary, which he is currently using for his latest work, an opera about Trudeau. He writes with a fountain pen, but eventually everything ends up on his computer, a Mac that breaks down a lot. (I hope he backs stuff up!)
Jesse Ferguson asked whether the notion that the readership for poetry was getting smaller was a myth. Muldoon quoted Byron who, after selling 500 copies of a book overnight, suddenly found himself famous one morning. Muldoon said that popularity isn’t always reflected in book sales. One sure way of making it popular, he said, would be to make it illegal.
Mark Robertson, aka Max Middle, asked about the relationship of the poem to its reading. Levin likened it to a play and said that with the exception of visual poems, a poem is not a poem until it is read aloud. Clarke agreed and added that interpretation changes the reading of a poem, which must work on the page and in the air/ear. Muldoon said that the poem itself should teach us how it wants to be read.
An audience member asked how the writers cultivated their subjects and their imagery. Levin said that the way he sees the world is like a disease. He’s been called a Cubist and cannot stop connecting unlike things. Clarke said that he has the habit of reading a lot and paying attention to what people say. He stays interested in the world and uses weird stories for inspiration, such as the guys who robbed a lingerie store using a meat clever. He feels the poet has to be more open to experience, is called to be more alive and more awake to life. Once again the audience cheered. I think we all wanted to yell out “amen” and “hallelujah.” Muldoon said that everyone has this habit, this disease, right from childhood, but we are often educated out of it. He said that poets have the habit in a much more devastating way.
Amatoristero Ede sparked discussion when he talked of entertainment as pandering to the petit bourgeoisie, to which Clarke replied the petit bourgeoisie don’t read poetry and insisted that it is dangerous to impose a political meaning on form, form is apolitical. The sheer fact of using rhyme does not make a poem without politics. Muldoon mused about the need for poetry to be solemn and wondered what was wrong with fun.
Oni asked about the writers’ opinions of spoken word. Muldoon was the only one to answer for some reason. He said that it was wonderful and admired the genuine wit of hip hop. This inspired a folklorist in the audience to speak of the popularity of poetry even in the eighteenth century when balladeers sold their poems to people on the streets. The audience member spoke of poems that are memorised: children’s rhymes and ribald limericks. Poetry is part of every day life. Clarke ended the evening with a reading of the 1925 poem by Evelyn Hamilton, The Disintegrating Husband:
I got married the other day, I
took my husband up to a high
cliff an let him look over an' he
almost fell. If it hadn't been for
me, I grabbed him by the coat an'
saved him. But I was sorry
afterwards, because when it
came time for us to retire he took
out his false teeth, an' put them
in a bureau drawer. Then he took
out a false eye an' put it in the
bureau drawer. Then he took off
a false arm an' put it in the
bureau drawer. He took off a
false wig an' put it in the bureau
drawer. Finally, he took off a
false leg an' put it in the bureau
drawer. When it came time for
me to git in bed, I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know if to git
in bed or in the bureau drawer.
After that, what more is there to say? We all disintegrated and went our separate ways. Once more the festival was inspiring, eclectic and thought provoking. The aftershock will continue with readings with lots of readings this week and beyond: Tree features poets Jan Conn & Diana Hartog, and an inaugural reading at the new location of Richard Fitzpatrick Books when the Bookthugs of Toronto come to visit. For more events, refer to the Bywords calendar (how’s that for a shameless plug?)
Brockwell set the celebratory tone of the evening with his eloquent and enthusiastic introductions. One of the things I enjoy about the festival is that those who host are usually well-known local writers and we get the chance to see them in a role other than authors reading their own work.
AJ Levin was the first to read. The former Torontonian, now a Winnipegger, has just had his first book, Monk’s Fruit, published by Nightwood Editions. It was fortunate, and likely not accidental, that he came first. It wouldn’t be easy to follow the powerhouse of George Elliot Clarke or the charm of Paul Muldoon.
He began by reading some of his recent and unpublished poetry, explaining that after the book had been out for about twelve days, he was already sick of it. His poems were full of humour, something that seems to have been very common to the male poets reading at the festival this time around. In addition there were many classical allusions and unusual juxtapositions: in a poem called the World’s Largest Cabbage Patch Collection about bullies for example, he read of “fairy tale white snow” being packed down a child’s underpants.
Between poems, Levin shared small biographical notes, but didn’t go on too long in his introductions. If a poet’s intro to a poem takes longer than the poem itself to read, I’m bored. This happens more often than you would think. I enjoyed Levin’s humour, found his poetry to be very masculine in that there were lots of allusions to males and masculine imagery and past times throughout: Vikings, Shakespeare, Orwell, shrimp trawlers. There was very little mention of women in the poems he chose to read: one poem feminised a potato, another spoke humourously about female curlers.
Levin is obviously a very well-read poet and his work was strong, but somehow I didn’t feel involved in it. I haven’t read enough of it to know whether this would change. The danger of poetry readings is this temptation to evaluate based on encountering someone’s work only once, especially when faced with so much poetry at once, as one is at a writers’ festival as this one. The reviews of his work are excellent. Ken Babstock says that “Monk’s Fruit revels in language, syntax, and allusion."
Next on the stage was the man many people in the audience, including me, had been waiting for: George Elliot Clarke. People actually screamed when he came on stage. I think he is the closest thing to a Canadian poetry superstar we have. In the audience that night was his young daughter, Orillia, about whom he boasted had just been chosen to be the poet of her grade 2 class.
Clarke read bits from his play Quebecité about interracial couples, announcing that it will be produced for the Ottawa Fringe Festival by Jessica Ruano. Clarke’s reading including word play extraordinaire and rapid puns, delivered in an energetic manner that enlivened the normally quiet Ottawa poetry audience. A few years’ ago, Clarke came to the Tree Reading Series and did the same thing.
He also read from his latest poetry collection, “Black,” explaining that he loved this word because of its strength, referring tongue in cheek to “he had black designs,” and “black mail not black male.” One of the strengths of a Clarke performance is his sense of fun. You feel like an accomplice to his wit, and his playful criticism of politicians. You are on his side. That’s not an easy feat for a performer to achieve, but Clarke does so with ease and experience. It was a lesson for poets wishing to conquer a stage.
I loved his sound play: “slinked off whistling to drink drink drink” and the poignancy of his imagery: “snow cleansed everything but memory;” the muscular language “the surge of sun, lemony, cantankerous, warm.” It is always interesting to hear a poet read work about one’s own city. In his poems “La Vérité à Ottawa I and II,” he offers a portrait of our city. Clarke lived here for a number of years when he worked as an aid to an MP. Perhaps that’s why his political poems are so sharp and so strong. He read poems about former prime ministers Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau. I am hoping he writes one about Paul Martin some day, but what is there to say, really?
Next on stage was Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who did a reading on Beckett the day before and from what I understand, thrilled the audience. After the energetic Clarke, Muldoon’s pace took a bit of getting used to. His voice was soft and he had a bit of a lilt. When he read he turned to face different parts of the audience. It didn’t take long before we were all spellbound by his stories, his wit and his poetry, which was observational and full of insightful detail and pathos.
While he had prepared poems to read, he also took his cues from what the other two had read. For example, he chose to read a poem about turkey buzzards because Levin had a poem about the vulture and the dredyl. The poem was also about his sister who had died after the poem was written. Muldoon used a lot of near rhyme and internal rhyme in his work. Some poems were historical: he read one about the Ottawa tribe, for instance, while others were amusing—a poem disparaging the cheeps and bleeps of modern technology, which turned out to be a grasshopper. He read a strangely poignant poem about his dog, Angus, who bayed at the sound of a train, filled with mustard gas or Saran. He also referenced a lot of male heroes, including Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island, Diogenes and Blondin, a Niagara Falls daredevil. He read an amazing poem called The Loaf, which is published in Moy Sand and Gravel. The poem was full of detail and word play. He reminded me somewhat of Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage who came to the festival last year. He had a similar story telling style and, like Armitage, his poetry was more formal, more inclined to rhyme and traditional word play than contemporary North American poetry I’ve read.
The question and answer period that followed was one of the most animated and participatory Q&A sessions I’ve experienced at the festival. Brockwell began with questions from the audience. rob mclennan, finally getting a break from his host duties, opened the questions, remarking that Clarke was one of the few who writes overtly political poetry and asking him to comment. Clarke feels that everyone has the right and the responsibility to comment on political goings on. Brockwell asked the others how they worked politics into their poetry. Muldoon said that it is inevitable for anyone who is vertical and trying to make sense of their world to include politics. Some of his latest work while he’s been living in the States has been overtly political, which surprises him. He gave a delightful etymology of two words mentioned by Clarke: “Tory” which he said meant “highway man, robber and hunted person,” and “shenanigan” the Irish word for a cunning fox.
Levin approached the question differently, stating that language is politics, a system of code created to keep others out of the loop, quoting a linguist/philospher whose name I didn’t catch. Levin feels it is the job of the poet not to exclude people, but to include them in new ways.
An audience member asked the writers to discuss the notion that poetry was meant to be learned by heart and the lack of memorisation of poetry today. Muldoon said that one has to allow poetry to extend culturally. Many people have memorised lyrics, such as the songs of Leonard Cohen. Muldoon admitted to having a bad memory for even his own poems and hoped that this didn’t have anything to do with their quality. He continued more seriously that in the past poems were beaten in to students and that it would be better if poetry were more a part of our daily lives. When he expressed the idea that newspaper should contain a poem a day, the audience cheered. Muldoon made the exquisite point that poetry should be part of our ordinary existence, not some strange thing.
Clarke continued along the same vein, pointing out that people do memorise non traditional media such as hip hop lyrics, love poems and religious scripture. He said that in order to be a half decent wooer, you have to be able to lay down a love poem. He then recited the twenty-third psalm in demonstration.
Oni, the Haitian Sensation, changed the subject completely when she asked all three writers “if you were a fruit, what kind would you be, and describe the flavour.”
Levin referenced his book’s title, Monk’s Fruit, which has no flavour.
Clarke replied that this was obviously an erotic question and said watermelon.
Muldoon quoted a poem by Tony Harrison, “A Cumquat for Keats,” saying that his fruit would be bittersweet and have a different impact from one occasion to another.
Revisiting the earlier question about poetry and politics, syntactic memorability, and Carleton University’s Penn Writer in Residence, Amatoristero Ede commented that he felt contemporary poetry was close to the syntax of prose. His current editorial on Sentinel Poetry gives further details on his opinion as I can’t do it justice here.
Muldoon chose to address the memorability portion of the question, saying rhyming verse is easier to remember and advertisers have figured that out. Clarke spoke of the blessings of having many resources for poetry. As a teen, he carried a boom box and listened to the music of Springsteen, Dylan and Joni Mitchell, even admitting to being a victim of disco. All of these influenced his poetry, including the imagery of the blues, “I want to grind your coffee.” He argued that some poetry is closer to prose, discussing the Language Poets, Pound’s “The Cantos.” He recommended that nothing be dismissed as being useful for poetry.
Brockwell asked a question about how each poet wrote and what instrument they used. Muldoon uses a PC because he finds it hard to write with a pen and his handwriting is poor. He used a typewriter when he was a teen, has always been concerned with how a poem looks on a printed page. Levin uses a pen, sometimes a typewriter and rarely a computer, claiming to be a sporadic thinker and finding the pen handier for clusters of thought. He doesn’t like to have to turn something on and wait for it. Clarke brought out a small Chinese diary, which he is currently using for his latest work, an opera about Trudeau. He writes with a fountain pen, but eventually everything ends up on his computer, a Mac that breaks down a lot. (I hope he backs stuff up!)
Jesse Ferguson asked whether the notion that the readership for poetry was getting smaller was a myth. Muldoon quoted Byron who, after selling 500 copies of a book overnight, suddenly found himself famous one morning. Muldoon said that popularity isn’t always reflected in book sales. One sure way of making it popular, he said, would be to make it illegal.
Mark Robertson, aka Max Middle, asked about the relationship of the poem to its reading. Levin likened it to a play and said that with the exception of visual poems, a poem is not a poem until it is read aloud. Clarke agreed and added that interpretation changes the reading of a poem, which must work on the page and in the air/ear. Muldoon said that the poem itself should teach us how it wants to be read.
An audience member asked how the writers cultivated their subjects and their imagery. Levin said that the way he sees the world is like a disease. He’s been called a Cubist and cannot stop connecting unlike things. Clarke said that he has the habit of reading a lot and paying attention to what people say. He stays interested in the world and uses weird stories for inspiration, such as the guys who robbed a lingerie store using a meat clever. He feels the poet has to be more open to experience, is called to be more alive and more awake to life. Once again the audience cheered. I think we all wanted to yell out “amen” and “hallelujah.” Muldoon said that everyone has this habit, this disease, right from childhood, but we are often educated out of it. He said that poets have the habit in a much more devastating way.
Amatoristero Ede sparked discussion when he talked of entertainment as pandering to the petit bourgeoisie, to which Clarke replied the petit bourgeoisie don’t read poetry and insisted that it is dangerous to impose a political meaning on form, form is apolitical. The sheer fact of using rhyme does not make a poem without politics. Muldoon mused about the need for poetry to be solemn and wondered what was wrong with fun.
Oni asked about the writers’ opinions of spoken word. Muldoon was the only one to answer for some reason. He said that it was wonderful and admired the genuine wit of hip hop. This inspired a folklorist in the audience to speak of the popularity of poetry even in the eighteenth century when balladeers sold their poems to people on the streets. The audience member spoke of poems that are memorised: children’s rhymes and ribald limericks. Poetry is part of every day life. Clarke ended the evening with a reading of the 1925 poem by Evelyn Hamilton, The Disintegrating Husband:
I got married the other day, I
took my husband up to a high
cliff an let him look over an' he
almost fell. If it hadn't been for
me, I grabbed him by the coat an'
saved him. But I was sorry
afterwards, because when it
came time for us to retire he took
out his false teeth, an' put them
in a bureau drawer. Then he took
out a false eye an' put it in the
bureau drawer. Then he took off
a false arm an' put it in the
bureau drawer. He took off a
false wig an' put it in the bureau
drawer. Finally, he took off a
false leg an' put it in the bureau
drawer. When it came time for
me to git in bed, I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know if to git
in bed or in the bureau drawer.
After that, what more is there to say? We all disintegrated and went our separate ways. Once more the festival was inspiring, eclectic and thought provoking. The aftershock will continue with readings with lots of readings this week and beyond: Tree features poets Jan Conn & Diana Hartog, and an inaugural reading at the new location of Richard Fitzpatrick Books when the Bookthugs of Toronto come to visit. For more events, refer to the Bywords calendar (how’s that for a shameless plug?)
Words Work, April 27
MayWorks festival puts poetry to work
The spring-time labour arts festival, MayWorks, will be entertaining and informing Ottawa audiences over the next couple of weeks with music, theatre, film, art and story-telling that find their origin in the gritty realities of working for a living.
The Cube Gallery at 7 Hamilton Ave. North will host the MayWorks reception on Sunday, April 30, from 2 to 5 p.m., and will be the site of "Moil," a showing of several artists' responses to the working world, until May 7. Other highlights of the week include concerts at the Library and Archives and at City Hall, the MayWorks Cabaret on Saturday May 6 at NAC's Fourth Stage, and Arlo Guthrie on Wednesday May 10 at Centrepointe Theatre. Club SAW, the Workers' Heritage Centre in Vanier, and the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama in Westboro also provide venues for films, talks and theatre pieces that give insight into the struggles and inspirations of workers seeking justice in Canada and throughout the world.
The week's literary tone will be set on Thursday, April 27, when five Ottawa writers present poetry on themes of work and social justice in the J.K. Wylie Boardroom at the headquarters of PSAC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada. That's downtown at 233 Gilmour, starting at 7 p.m. The featured readers are all well-known poets with recent books for sale; they are also union organizers, human rights workers, peace activists, volunteers in the community, and workers familiar with the pressures of globalization. The poetic fireworks of John Baglow, Cyril Dabydeen, Christopher Levenson, NadineMcInnis, and Nicola Vulpe will no doubt bring new insights to the subject on the eve of Canada's Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job. The reading is supported by the League of Canadian Poets and National Poetry Month.
The spring-time labour arts festival, MayWorks, will be entertaining and informing Ottawa audiences over the next couple of weeks with music, theatre, film, art and story-telling that find their origin in the gritty realities of working for a living.
The Cube Gallery at 7 Hamilton Ave. North will host the MayWorks reception on Sunday, April 30, from 2 to 5 p.m., and will be the site of "Moil," a showing of several artists' responses to the working world, until May 7. Other highlights of the week include concerts at the Library and Archives and at City Hall, the MayWorks Cabaret on Saturday May 6 at NAC's Fourth Stage, and Arlo Guthrie on Wednesday May 10 at Centrepointe Theatre. Club SAW, the Workers' Heritage Centre in Vanier, and the Ottawa School of Speech and Drama in Westboro also provide venues for films, talks and theatre pieces that give insight into the struggles and inspirations of workers seeking justice in Canada and throughout the world.
The week's literary tone will be set on Thursday, April 27, when five Ottawa writers present poetry on themes of work and social justice in the J.K. Wylie Boardroom at the headquarters of PSAC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada. That's downtown at 233 Gilmour, starting at 7 p.m. The featured readers are all well-known poets with recent books for sale; they are also union organizers, human rights workers, peace activists, volunteers in the community, and workers familiar with the pressures of globalization. The poetic fireworks of John Baglow, Cyril Dabydeen, Christopher Levenson, NadineMcInnis, and Nicola Vulpe will no doubt bring new insights to the subject on the eve of Canada's Day of Mourning for workers killed and injured on the job. The reading is supported by the League of Canadian Poets and National Poetry Month.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Poetry Cabaret 2: Butterflies, Basho's Frogs and Axel Rose
The second of the Writers Festival's poetry cabarets featured three poets who couldn't be more different from one another. If I were to recommend to a poetry-curious soul (most of the people I know) to attend an evening of poetry, this is the one I would have recommended.
Gary Barwin from Hamilton, Ontario, writes poetry that is perhaps the most accessible to the general public. His work is full of humour while, at the same time, he uses tight and intelligent language. His performance style is friendly and entertaining. He opened with Canada Weeds, a riff on last week's CBC radio show Canada Reads in which he incorporated and punified book titles. At first I thought he just had one of those Elmer Fudd speech impediments, but as the poem progressed, it became clear that he was actually punning. The pun that produced the most groaning was "such a long gurney."
I enjoyed Barwin's performance style and his work. It was a bit like watching The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy and The Man With Two Brains at the same time. The most memorable of his reading for me were from Frogments from the Frag Pool, which he wrote with Albertan poet Derek Beaulieu. In this book, Basho's frog haiku inspire clever alternative versions and extrapolations and include word play, tongue twisters and the like. What is it about haiku that brings out the mischief in poets? This reminds me somewhat of Sherwin Tija's The World Is A Heartbreaker, which I also enjoyed very much. My favourite line from Frogments was from a Beaulieu haiku: "a jewish man/i've no foresight either."
Barwin's poem Uvula's Shadows about receiving mail and having to sign for it was a tour de force of absurdity that just kept piling up and piling up to ridiculous proportions. At the same time there were so many lines that resonated beautifully as images, such as the "vast black dental work of the sky." Barwin combines humour and philosophy exceptionally well. I've heard him read only once before at Toronto's Victory Café after the Toronto Small Press Book Fair. He's also a children's writer and I can see that. His style reminded me somewhat of Torontonian Robert Priest whose kids' poetry book The Secret Invasion of Bananas, is one of my favs.
Barwin was a relaxed performer. Chalk that up to one of the final poems he read for his set:
"Why do we worry/every word on earth/is in the perfect place."
Next up was native writer, artist, musician, playwright and renaissance man, John McDonald. His style was intimate and free as he switched between the mic at the podium and the wireless mic, moving with his poetry and at times crouching down over the his book, The Glass Lodge. He credits writing the book with helping him deal with the anger after a life as alcoholic, drug addict, gang member and street prostitute. He's definitely one of the most colourful characters I've experienced at the Festival.
While McDonald's autobiographical poems were reminiscent of confessional poetry, I enjoyed his humour, candour, intelligence and his lyrical hope in the face of the brutality of his past.
Next on the stage was Angela Rawlings who read from her first poetry book, Wide Slumber For Lepidopterists . It's inaccurate to say that Rawlings read--really she performed. The poems blend the sleep state with the lifecycle of a butterfly or moth. It was hard not to notice Rawling's moth like manner as she gesticulated in a beautiful green dress. I found her performance and the poetry spellbinding, so much so, that I didn't really take many notes. The most remarkable thing about Rawling's poetry to me was that it was filled with so much air, so much breath, the cadence of her words and the way she was able to reproduce through her language, the electricity of insect sounds. Rawlings has an intimate relationship with sound. I felt as if we were seeing language from a very close up point of view, right down to the level of the phoneme. I don't want to give Rawling's imagery short shrift by focusing too much on her ability with sound. She's an effective imagist. The pictures she painted stayed with me long after the reading ended. For more about Rawlings and her poetry, please consult rob mclennan's blog, the April 17 entry.
The question and answer segment of the reading was brief, but interesting.
Mclennan asked Rawlings whether her juxtaposition of the chaos of the sleep state with the order of a moth's natural state was deliberate. Surprisingly, while she has studied chaos theory and discusses it in poetry workshops, she didn't do this deliberately.
When speaking with Barwin, mclennan revealed that the poet had attended Sir Robert Borden High School, and wondered whether the school had influenced his writing. Barwin responded that he's definitely been influenced by the mindscape of mid-western Ottawa, down to the selection of vowels. It was obvious through their easy repartee that mclennan and Barwin have known one another for some time.
In a question to McDonald, mclennan referenced Dany Laferrière, the Haitian writer who had come to the festival previously. Laferriere said that he'd written his novel to save his life. mclennan wanted to know if it was the same for McDonald. McDonald explained that he has always carried around a pen and paper and used his writing for catharsis. He said he has thirteen to fourteen boxes full of stuff written on toilet paper, napkins and even a Metallica CD case.
On the subject of collaboration, all authors felt that writing was a collaborative process. Rawlings explained that for her book, the printer at Coach House Books added a blue tint to the text. She is currently collaborating with a jazz singer and a dancer to render her book as a multi-visual performance.
Mclennan noted that all three poets had a large performance factor in their work. McDonald explained that this was the only way he could avoid being bored shitless. He referenced the aboriginal elders of his childhood who performed and used hand gestures. He said that they taught him to take responsibility for the words he spoke and that he held the words with reverence. His style also comes from fronting many a rock band. Upon request he demonstrated his "Axel Rose swivel" much to the delight of the audience.
Barwin mentioned that some things work as performance pieces while others don't and he's conscious of that when he's deciding what to read before an audience. He said that rhythm, musicality and melody are always implicit in a piece, even if silent.
A member of the audience asked Rawlings about the erotic content of her work, something that wasn't mentioned in the introduction or in any other references to her work that he'd seen. She replied that lepidoptery and sleep both have sensual components, sensual as in taking into account the senses. On an autobiographical note, she's been thinking of the erotic from both the standpoints of pleasure and violence for the last five years or so.
The audience member found her work reminiscent of Christopher Dewdney's language of the natural world. In fact she'd studied with Dewdney in the past and referenced his work, the Natural History of Southern Ontario, as being influential.
Question period ended quietly and there was a brief autograph signing in the lobby. The final poetry cabaret takes place Sunday night with George Elliot Clarke, AJ Levin and Paul Muldoon.
Gary Barwin from Hamilton, Ontario, writes poetry that is perhaps the most accessible to the general public. His work is full of humour while, at the same time, he uses tight and intelligent language. His performance style is friendly and entertaining. He opened with Canada Weeds, a riff on last week's CBC radio show Canada Reads in which he incorporated and punified book titles. At first I thought he just had one of those Elmer Fudd speech impediments, but as the poem progressed, it became clear that he was actually punning. The pun that produced the most groaning was "such a long gurney."
I enjoyed Barwin's performance style and his work. It was a bit like watching The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy and The Man With Two Brains at the same time. The most memorable of his reading for me were from Frogments from the Frag Pool, which he wrote with Albertan poet Derek Beaulieu. In this book, Basho's frog haiku inspire clever alternative versions and extrapolations and include word play, tongue twisters and the like. What is it about haiku that brings out the mischief in poets? This reminds me somewhat of Sherwin Tija's The World Is A Heartbreaker, which I also enjoyed very much. My favourite line from Frogments was from a Beaulieu haiku: "a jewish man/i've no foresight either."
Barwin's poem Uvula's Shadows about receiving mail and having to sign for it was a tour de force of absurdity that just kept piling up and piling up to ridiculous proportions. At the same time there were so many lines that resonated beautifully as images, such as the "vast black dental work of the sky." Barwin combines humour and philosophy exceptionally well. I've heard him read only once before at Toronto's Victory Café after the Toronto Small Press Book Fair. He's also a children's writer and I can see that. His style reminded me somewhat of Torontonian Robert Priest whose kids' poetry book The Secret Invasion of Bananas, is one of my favs.
Barwin was a relaxed performer. Chalk that up to one of the final poems he read for his set:
"Why do we worry/every word on earth/is in the perfect place."
Next up was native writer, artist, musician, playwright and renaissance man, John McDonald. His style was intimate and free as he switched between the mic at the podium and the wireless mic, moving with his poetry and at times crouching down over the his book, The Glass Lodge. He credits writing the book with helping him deal with the anger after a life as alcoholic, drug addict, gang member and street prostitute. He's definitely one of the most colourful characters I've experienced at the Festival.
While McDonald's autobiographical poems were reminiscent of confessional poetry, I enjoyed his humour, candour, intelligence and his lyrical hope in the face of the brutality of his past.
Next on the stage was Angela Rawlings who read from her first poetry book, Wide Slumber For Lepidopterists . It's inaccurate to say that Rawlings read--really she performed. The poems blend the sleep state with the lifecycle of a butterfly or moth. It was hard not to notice Rawling's moth like manner as she gesticulated in a beautiful green dress. I found her performance and the poetry spellbinding, so much so, that I didn't really take many notes. The most remarkable thing about Rawling's poetry to me was that it was filled with so much air, so much breath, the cadence of her words and the way she was able to reproduce through her language, the electricity of insect sounds. Rawlings has an intimate relationship with sound. I felt as if we were seeing language from a very close up point of view, right down to the level of the phoneme. I don't want to give Rawling's imagery short shrift by focusing too much on her ability with sound. She's an effective imagist. The pictures she painted stayed with me long after the reading ended. For more about Rawlings and her poetry, please consult rob mclennan's blog, the April 17 entry.
The question and answer segment of the reading was brief, but interesting.
Mclennan asked Rawlings whether her juxtaposition of the chaos of the sleep state with the order of a moth's natural state was deliberate. Surprisingly, while she has studied chaos theory and discusses it in poetry workshops, she didn't do this deliberately.
When speaking with Barwin, mclennan revealed that the poet had attended Sir Robert Borden High School, and wondered whether the school had influenced his writing. Barwin responded that he's definitely been influenced by the mindscape of mid-western Ottawa, down to the selection of vowels. It was obvious through their easy repartee that mclennan and Barwin have known one another for some time.
In a question to McDonald, mclennan referenced Dany Laferrière, the Haitian writer who had come to the festival previously. Laferriere said that he'd written his novel to save his life. mclennan wanted to know if it was the same for McDonald. McDonald explained that he has always carried around a pen and paper and used his writing for catharsis. He said he has thirteen to fourteen boxes full of stuff written on toilet paper, napkins and even a Metallica CD case.
On the subject of collaboration, all authors felt that writing was a collaborative process. Rawlings explained that for her book, the printer at Coach House Books added a blue tint to the text. She is currently collaborating with a jazz singer and a dancer to render her book as a multi-visual performance.
Mclennan noted that all three poets had a large performance factor in their work. McDonald explained that this was the only way he could avoid being bored shitless. He referenced the aboriginal elders of his childhood who performed and used hand gestures. He said that they taught him to take responsibility for the words he spoke and that he held the words with reverence. His style also comes from fronting many a rock band. Upon request he demonstrated his "Axel Rose swivel" much to the delight of the audience.
Barwin mentioned that some things work as performance pieces while others don't and he's conscious of that when he's deciding what to read before an audience. He said that rhythm, musicality and melody are always implicit in a piece, even if silent.
A member of the audience asked Rawlings about the erotic content of her work, something that wasn't mentioned in the introduction or in any other references to her work that he'd seen. She replied that lepidoptery and sleep both have sensual components, sensual as in taking into account the senses. On an autobiographical note, she's been thinking of the erotic from both the standpoints of pleasure and violence for the last five years or so.
The audience member found her work reminiscent of Christopher Dewdney's language of the natural world. In fact she'd studied with Dewdney in the past and referenced his work, the Natural History of Southern Ontario, as being influential.
Question period ended quietly and there was a brief autograph signing in the lobby. The final poetry cabaret takes place Sunday night with George Elliot Clarke, AJ Levin and Paul Muldoon.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
new session of poetry workshops with rob mclennan
If anyone is interested, I'm putting together a new series of poetry workshops for spring/summer (as soon as the writers festival is over) on mostly Mondays, a Tuesday & then another Monday: May 8, 15, 29; June 12, 19, 26, July 4 & 10. The workshops will take place at Collected Works Bookstore, Wellington & Holland, Ottawa, 7-9pm (around both bookstore & my wacky schedules). or 613 239 0337 for more information on collected works;
an eight week poetry workshop, the course will start with a focus on workshopping the writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian & American. the end-goal of the course will be a collective chapbook publication. participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped.
rob mclennan is a prolific writer, editor, critic & visual artist living in Ottawa. the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently name , an errant (Stride). the author of over 4 dozen poetry chapbooks, he has published poetry, fiction & critical work in journals, newspapers & anthologies in eight countries, & read in three. in 1999, he won the Canadian Authors Association / Air Canada Prize for the most promising writer (in any genre) in Canada under the age of 30. the editor of the cauldron books series through Broken Jaw Press, he is the editor of numerous anthologies, including side/lines: a new canadian poetics (Insomniac Press), You & Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing (with Andy Brown, Vehicule Press) & Groundswell: the best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press). the editor/publisher of above/ground press & STANZAS magazine since 1993, he has produced roughly 500 items under the above/ground press logo. with Stephen Brockwell, he edits poetics.ca, an on-line journal of contemporary poetics, & by himself, the online poetry annual ottawater, & a blog of reviews & other writing at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
an eight week poetry workshop, the course will start with a focus on workshopping the writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian & American. the end-goal of the course will be a collective chapbook publication. participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped.
rob mclennan is a prolific writer, editor, critic & visual artist living in Ottawa. the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently name , an errant (Stride). the author of over 4 dozen poetry chapbooks, he has published poetry, fiction & critical work in journals, newspapers & anthologies in eight countries, & read in three. in 1999, he won the Canadian Authors Association / Air Canada Prize for the most promising writer (in any genre) in Canada under the age of 30. the editor of the cauldron books series through Broken Jaw Press, he is the editor of numerous anthologies, including side/lines: a new canadian poetics (Insomniac Press), You & Your Bright Ideas: New Montreal Writing (with Andy Brown, Vehicule Press) & Groundswell: the best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press). the editor/publisher of above/ground press & STANZAS magazine since 1993, he has produced roughly 500 items under the above/ground press logo. with Stephen Brockwell, he edits poetics.ca, an on-line journal of contemporary poetics, & by himself, the online poetry annual ottawater, & a blog of reviews & other writing at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Writers Fest First Night and the beer is better
It’s the tenth anniversary of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Steamwhistle is no longer the only beer. Now there’s St. Ambroise, not my favourite raspberry wheat, but still, an improvement over Steamwhistle piss water.
Sean Wilson opened Poetry Cabaret 1 by mentioning that poetry was beginning to overtake fiction at the festival and that they had to actually throw out some novelists to make room for all the poets. Vive la poésie, vive la poésie libre!
Poetry Cabaret 1 was well attended for Easter Monday and for poetry. Not as wild and crazy as last year’s Armitage reading, but still decent for a Monday night in Ottawa, not traditionally a poetry night here. I’m not sure what people actually do on Monday nights when they aren’t going to readings.
rob mclennan, this year’s writer-in-residence, emceed the evening which featured Torontonian Kevin Connolly, Montréalaise Nicole Brossard and former Ottawa Valley boy Ken Babstock. Connolly and Babstock were just here last year and Brossard was here for the first festival ten years ago.
The highlight of the reading portion for me was Brossard and mclennan co-reading a transcreation of one of Brossard’s poems. The transcreation was written by Vancouver poet and one of Tish’s founding editors, Fred Wah. rob follows in the footsteps of others who’ve read transcreations of Brossard’s poetry, bill bissett at the Vancouver International Writers Festival in 1997, for example.
Connolly read from all three of his poetry collections and also read some new work. He’s experimenting with various form poems and read a rhyming poem.
Brossard read from an excerpt of the translation of her novel “Yesterday, At the Hotel Clarendon” about two women who meet in a bar in Quebec City to talk. She also read some poetry in French and English. I particularly enjoyed hearing Brossard read in French, her own language. The cadence felt more natural and the words more intimate in French to me.
Babstock read from his new collection Airstream Land Yacht and also a rhyming poem about Tarantella, which I think he actually read the last time he was here too. Of the three, it was Babstock’s poetry that held my attention (not an easy feat). I enjoyed his blend of philosophical musings on human consciousness with tactile and visual imagery. One poem about flying a kite was particularly resonant. There’s humour and friendship in his work, and as he says “other people.”
The Q&A sessions of the festival are always a treat. For some reason the poetry Q&As always seem better to me than the fiction Q&As. There are fewer questions like “why did you become a writer?” In this session mclennan asked sensible and not cliché questions. This is where individual differences between the writers came out. In response to a query about whether or not they wrote facts, Connolly said that he thought much Canadian poetry was non-fiction, containing the truth about ideas and personal experience, whereas when he uses “I” it is likely to be a fabrication. For him the poem is a story inspired by word play, which leads to plot. This makes his poetry either loved or loathed by many. I can’t say I loathe his poetry, but it never really resonates for me and perhaps this is the reason. There’s skill and humour in his work, but for me there’s an absence of feeling, of intimacy. The humour acts as a kind of deflection of what’s real, what’s personal.
Like Connolly, Brossard also mentioned that much of English poetry in Canada is narrative whereas French poetry is philosophical and metaphorical, using similes and metaphor. Her own poems focus on what she refers to as “extreme presence.” She finds it more difficult to have time to reflect and be in the moment and worries that she won’t be able to write as much about her personal experiences anymore. This made me want to give her a holiday just to read and think.
mclennan asked about Plunder Verse. An apt topic since Connolly had read a poem where he took Mark Twain’s aphorisms and rearranged them. Did Connolly see doing something like this as plagiarism, as fraudulent? This was a poet’s question. mclennan has been working with his own variations of other people’s poems lately. Connolly said that when it works it isn’t fraudulent. To reproduce the Dada cut up technique, he used writings of Nietzsche in a poem. While the words were rearranged, Nietzsche’s voice was still strong. mclennan quoted John Newlove who said that the arrangement is all.
There were a few questions from the audience. I was curious about whether Brossard had occasion to change the translation of her work and also whether she felt that the translation was still her own work or whether there was some kind of distance. She talked about the differences between the two languages, how French doesn’t use possessive adjectives to refer to body parts (“les mains”) while English does (his hands), the way in which the gender in French allows her room to play, to use strategies and can also cause challenges (le romancier, the novelist, is masculine).
Brossard says she has been very fortunate in that her translators are people who are familiar with and who enjoy her work. She has done some of her own translation on occasion or at times has tried to write directly in English when she knows only the translation will be published. Over the years, writing in English has become easier as she is more exposed to the English language than she used to be.
An audience member (Kate) commented that there isn’t much torment in contemporary Canadian poetry and asked the writers whether they thought suffering was passé.
Brossard mentioned that in French, poets are still writing from the wounds. There are writers of childhood and writers of adolescence, while when she attends readings of English poetry, the writers tell lots of jokes.
Babstock said there has been a kind of backpedaling since the confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century, of writers like Plath, Lowell and Berryman. Now poets are looking for some decorum and wish to avoid the trap of human suffering as a subject.
Connolly said that suicide ceased to be a good career move. Readers find it useful to know how poets get through.
The evening finished with socializing and book buying. This year the Nicholas Hoare bookshop is in the sunken lobby as are the author signings. This is an intelligent move of the organizers to actually get people to leave the venue and allow for the next session to begin on time. In this case, poetry closed the evening, as it will on Friday and Sunday night.
This year’s festival pays homage to Samuel Beckett on the 100th anniversary of his birth and also, perhaps since it follows so closely on the haunches of the Easter Bunny, has a largely spiritual content with writers on religion and ethics, such as Tom Harpur. There’s even a session on Friday about wine tasting, one of the most spiritual activities around. As usual the organizers have a little bit of something for everyone. It is pleasing to see that poetry is still an important part of the festival.
See you at the next poetry cabaret on Friday evening to hear Angela Rawlings, Gary Barwin and John McDonald (not our John W. Macdonald!) Perhaps you’ll buy me a St. Ambroise?
Sean Wilson opened Poetry Cabaret 1 by mentioning that poetry was beginning to overtake fiction at the festival and that they had to actually throw out some novelists to make room for all the poets. Vive la poésie, vive la poésie libre!
Poetry Cabaret 1 was well attended for Easter Monday and for poetry. Not as wild and crazy as last year’s Armitage reading, but still decent for a Monday night in Ottawa, not traditionally a poetry night here. I’m not sure what people actually do on Monday nights when they aren’t going to readings.
rob mclennan, this year’s writer-in-residence, emceed the evening which featured Torontonian Kevin Connolly, Montréalaise Nicole Brossard and former Ottawa Valley boy Ken Babstock. Connolly and Babstock were just here last year and Brossard was here for the first festival ten years ago.
The highlight of the reading portion for me was Brossard and mclennan co-reading a transcreation of one of Brossard’s poems. The transcreation was written by Vancouver poet and one of Tish’s founding editors, Fred Wah. rob follows in the footsteps of others who’ve read transcreations of Brossard’s poetry, bill bissett at the Vancouver International Writers Festival in 1997, for example.
Connolly read from all three of his poetry collections and also read some new work. He’s experimenting with various form poems and read a rhyming poem.
Brossard read from an excerpt of the translation of her novel “Yesterday, At the Hotel Clarendon” about two women who meet in a bar in Quebec City to talk. She also read some poetry in French and English. I particularly enjoyed hearing Brossard read in French, her own language. The cadence felt more natural and the words more intimate in French to me.
Babstock read from his new collection Airstream Land Yacht and also a rhyming poem about Tarantella, which I think he actually read the last time he was here too. Of the three, it was Babstock’s poetry that held my attention (not an easy feat). I enjoyed his blend of philosophical musings on human consciousness with tactile and visual imagery. One poem about flying a kite was particularly resonant. There’s humour and friendship in his work, and as he says “other people.”
The Q&A sessions of the festival are always a treat. For some reason the poetry Q&As always seem better to me than the fiction Q&As. There are fewer questions like “why did you become a writer?” In this session mclennan asked sensible and not cliché questions. This is where individual differences between the writers came out. In response to a query about whether or not they wrote facts, Connolly said that he thought much Canadian poetry was non-fiction, containing the truth about ideas and personal experience, whereas when he uses “I” it is likely to be a fabrication. For him the poem is a story inspired by word play, which leads to plot. This makes his poetry either loved or loathed by many. I can’t say I loathe his poetry, but it never really resonates for me and perhaps this is the reason. There’s skill and humour in his work, but for me there’s an absence of feeling, of intimacy. The humour acts as a kind of deflection of what’s real, what’s personal.
Like Connolly, Brossard also mentioned that much of English poetry in Canada is narrative whereas French poetry is philosophical and metaphorical, using similes and metaphor. Her own poems focus on what she refers to as “extreme presence.” She finds it more difficult to have time to reflect and be in the moment and worries that she won’t be able to write as much about her personal experiences anymore. This made me want to give her a holiday just to read and think.
mclennan asked about Plunder Verse. An apt topic since Connolly had read a poem where he took Mark Twain’s aphorisms and rearranged them. Did Connolly see doing something like this as plagiarism, as fraudulent? This was a poet’s question. mclennan has been working with his own variations of other people’s poems lately. Connolly said that when it works it isn’t fraudulent. To reproduce the Dada cut up technique, he used writings of Nietzsche in a poem. While the words were rearranged, Nietzsche’s voice was still strong. mclennan quoted John Newlove who said that the arrangement is all.
There were a few questions from the audience. I was curious about whether Brossard had occasion to change the translation of her work and also whether she felt that the translation was still her own work or whether there was some kind of distance. She talked about the differences between the two languages, how French doesn’t use possessive adjectives to refer to body parts (“les mains”) while English does (his hands), the way in which the gender in French allows her room to play, to use strategies and can also cause challenges (le romancier, the novelist, is masculine).
Brossard says she has been very fortunate in that her translators are people who are familiar with and who enjoy her work. She has done some of her own translation on occasion or at times has tried to write directly in English when she knows only the translation will be published. Over the years, writing in English has become easier as she is more exposed to the English language than she used to be.
An audience member (Kate) commented that there isn’t much torment in contemporary Canadian poetry and asked the writers whether they thought suffering was passé.
Brossard mentioned that in French, poets are still writing from the wounds. There are writers of childhood and writers of adolescence, while when she attends readings of English poetry, the writers tell lots of jokes.
Babstock said there has been a kind of backpedaling since the confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century, of writers like Plath, Lowell and Berryman. Now poets are looking for some decorum and wish to avoid the trap of human suffering as a subject.
Connolly said that suicide ceased to be a good career move. Readers find it useful to know how poets get through.
The evening finished with socializing and book buying. This year the Nicholas Hoare bookshop is in the sunken lobby as are the author signings. This is an intelligent move of the organizers to actually get people to leave the venue and allow for the next session to begin on time. In this case, poetry closed the evening, as it will on Friday and Sunday night.
This year’s festival pays homage to Samuel Beckett on the 100th anniversary of his birth and also, perhaps since it follows so closely on the haunches of the Easter Bunny, has a largely spiritual content with writers on religion and ethics, such as Tom Harpur. There’s even a session on Friday about wine tasting, one of the most spiritual activities around. As usual the organizers have a little bit of something for everyone. It is pleasing to see that poetry is still an important part of the festival.
See you at the next poetry cabaret on Friday evening to hear Angela Rawlings, Gary Barwin and John McDonald (not our John W. Macdonald!) Perhaps you’ll buy me a St. Ambroise?
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Submit to ImPress
Attention Ottawa poets (or, poets):
ImPress, a small, mostly broadside press (at this point) is seeking new poems for brand spanking new broadsides. The run will be small, about 50 or so, but will be prepared with care, and hand numbered. ImPress will retain a little more than half the run and distribute the remainder as contributor copies. As of now, no payment will be offered. Maybe in the future. Expect copies to be distributed to authors by end of summer 2006.
If you'd like to receive some of your poems printed on lovely paper by ImPress, and displayed at future book fairs and such, please submit to: ImPressPress@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can mail your submission (mail is nice): 3783 Boulevard Lasalle, Montreal, H4G 1Z7.
Submissions should generally be no more than one page and should be sent as a WORD or PDF file, unless the poem is straight up (eg. left-margin hugging), in which case you can simply send it in the body of an email.
Eventually, there will be a book or something.
To National Poetry Month!
Wanda O'Connor
ImPress, a small, mostly broadside press (at this point) is seeking new poems for brand spanking new broadsides. The run will be small, about 50 or so, but will be prepared with care, and hand numbered. ImPress will retain a little more than half the run and distribute the remainder as contributor copies. As of now, no payment will be offered. Maybe in the future. Expect copies to be distributed to authors by end of summer 2006.
If you'd like to receive some of your poems printed on lovely paper by ImPress, and displayed at future book fairs and such, please submit to: ImPressPress@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can mail your submission (mail is nice): 3783 Boulevard Lasalle, Montreal, H4G 1Z7.
Submissions should generally be no more than one page and should be sent as a WORD or PDF file, unless the poem is straight up (eg. left-margin hugging), in which case you can simply send it in the body of an email.
Eventually, there will be a book or something.
To National Poetry Month!
Wanda O'Connor
Monday, April 03, 2006
The Poetry Experience: Poetry Month in Ottawa
In celebration of Poetry month, the Sunnyside branch of the Ottawa Public Library (OPL) will present Thursday evening poetry readings in April and May at 7 p.m. Each Thursday evening the branch will feature two local poets in an hour-long program:
Apr. 6 - Anita Lahey and Nicola Vulpe
Apr. 13 - Marieke Kerkhove and John Baglow
Apr. 20 - Susan Atkinson and Monty Reid
May 4 - Sandra Nicholls and Robert Ross
May 11 - Sharon Hawkins and Stephen Brockwell
May 25 - Barbara Myers and David O' Meara
The Sunnyside branch is located at 1049 Bank Street.
Contact: Yvonne van Lith, Sunnyside branch, Ottawa Public Library. (613) 730-1082
Apr. 6 - Anita Lahey and Nicola Vulpe
Apr. 13 - Marieke Kerkhove and John Baglow
Apr. 20 - Susan Atkinson and Monty Reid
May 4 - Sandra Nicholls and Robert Ross
May 11 - Sharon Hawkins and Stephen Brockwell
May 25 - Barbara Myers and David O' Meara
The Sunnyside branch is located at 1049 Bank Street.
Contact: Yvonne van Lith, Sunnyside branch, Ottawa Public Library. (613) 730-1082
Friday, March 31, 2006
Lampman Poetry Award Reading at Beechwood Cemetery
The resting place of Canada's finest nineteenth-century poet will be the site of a poetry reading in his honour on Wednesday, May 10.
Born in 1861, Archibald Lampman graduated from Trinity College (Toronto) in 1882, then moved to Ottawa, where he worked for the Post Office until his death in 1899. He is known for his ability to immerse metaphysics in the details of nature, which he observed while hiking around what was then the wilderness capital of a new country.
Each year, the Arc Poetry Society's Archibald Lampman Award recognizes an outstanding book of poems published by a contemporary Ottawa-area poet. In past years, the award has gone to such notable local poets as George Elliot Clarke, Gary Geddes, Stephanie Bolster, and last year's winner, David O'Meara.
On May 10, eleven entrants to this year's prestigious Lampman competition will read from their work at the Reception Centre at historic Beechwood Cemetery. Poets Daniel Boland, Ronnie R. Brown, Tony Cosier, Laura Farina, William Hawkins, Bing He, Tom MacGregor, Nadine McInnis, Seymour Mayne, E. Russell Smith and Andrew Steinmetz will take the podium starting at 7:30 p.m.
Founded in 1873, Beechwood Cemetery is the resting place of Archibald Lampman, John Newlove, and many other leading Canadian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth century. A portion of Beechwood Cemetery has been designated “Poet’s Hill,” and is being developed as a site for literary commemoration, reflection and education.
The Beechwood Cemetery Reception Centre is located at 280 Beechwood Avenue. Admission to the reading is free. Fundraising initiatives at the event will support the Poet’s Hill project.
Born in 1861, Archibald Lampman graduated from Trinity College (Toronto) in 1882, then moved to Ottawa, where he worked for the Post Office until his death in 1899. He is known for his ability to immerse metaphysics in the details of nature, which he observed while hiking around what was then the wilderness capital of a new country.
Each year, the Arc Poetry Society's Archibald Lampman Award recognizes an outstanding book of poems published by a contemporary Ottawa-area poet. In past years, the award has gone to such notable local poets as George Elliot Clarke, Gary Geddes, Stephanie Bolster, and last year's winner, David O'Meara.
On May 10, eleven entrants to this year's prestigious Lampman competition will read from their work at the Reception Centre at historic Beechwood Cemetery. Poets Daniel Boland, Ronnie R. Brown, Tony Cosier, Laura Farina, William Hawkins, Bing He, Tom MacGregor, Nadine McInnis, Seymour Mayne, E. Russell Smith and Andrew Steinmetz will take the podium starting at 7:30 p.m.
Founded in 1873, Beechwood Cemetery is the resting place of Archibald Lampman, John Newlove, and many other leading Canadian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth century. A portion of Beechwood Cemetery has been designated “Poet’s Hill,” and is being developed as a site for literary commemoration, reflection and education.
The Beechwood Cemetery Reception Centre is located at 280 Beechwood Avenue. Admission to the reading is free. Fundraising initiatives at the event will support the Poet’s Hill project.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
a sad note from Chris Sorrenti
It is with great sadness that I convey to you that our dear friend, Juan O'Neill, passed away at 9:22 a.m. this morning. There will therefore be no get-together at the Heart Institute this afternoon as originally planned.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the events of the past two days, I apologize for not getting in touch sooner, but things happened so quickly, it left little time for notification.
During the day, Monday, Juan began experiencing difficulty breathing. He then called an ambulance to take him to hospital. Upon arrival at the Heart Institute he suffered a heart attack, and went into coma. Although the staff managed to resuscitate his heart, as per a cat scan, the prognosis was that he would not come out of the coma, and if he did, he would not be the same man. Between then and this morning, he remained on life support, however his heart began to experience difficulty, and the doctors chose to discontinue life support.
I await word from his daughter, Ariel, as to a formal service, but meanwhile, Heather Ferguson has booked the downstairs room of the Royal Oak for this Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m for a special memorial get-together/poetry reading in Juan's honour. All are welcome to join us in celebrating his life and friendship, and sharing a related anecdote or poem.
Chris Sorrenti
Sasquatch webmaster
(613) 526-0056
tomcat7 (at)rogers (dot)com
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the events of the past two days, I apologize for not getting in touch sooner, but things happened so quickly, it left little time for notification.
During the day, Monday, Juan began experiencing difficulty breathing. He then called an ambulance to take him to hospital. Upon arrival at the Heart Institute he suffered a heart attack, and went into coma. Although the staff managed to resuscitate his heart, as per a cat scan, the prognosis was that he would not come out of the coma, and if he did, he would not be the same man. Between then and this morning, he remained on life support, however his heart began to experience difficulty, and the doctors chose to discontinue life support.
I await word from his daughter, Ariel, as to a formal service, but meanwhile, Heather Ferguson has booked the downstairs room of the Royal Oak for this Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m for a special memorial get-together/poetry reading in Juan's honour. All are welcome to join us in celebrating his life and friendship, and sharing a related anecdote or poem.
Chris Sorrenti
Sasquatch webmaster
(613) 526-0056
tomcat7 (at)rogers (dot)com
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
P.E.I. Poet Packs a Punch
Reviewed by Nicholas Lea
shauna mccabe’s first trade collection offers up spiritually heavy, often gritty, sometimes sweet poems of Tennessee road trips, maritime love affairs, God in streams, and geomorphology. ancient motel landscape is a dense, stylistic and thematically ambitious collection that deals primarily in the “experimental” or “avant-garde” (dangerous terms, I know) ; relying heavily on syntactical, grammatical, and linguistic experimentation for effect, rather than overt imagism or linear-style, narrative tropes. To say her poems are challenging would not be an understatement.
Reviewed by Nicholas Lea
shauna mccabe’s first trade collection offers up spiritually heavy, often gritty, sometimes sweet poems of Tennessee road trips, maritime love affairs, God in streams, and geomorphology. ancient motel landscape is a dense, stylistic and thematically ambitious collection that deals primarily in the “experimental” or “avant-garde” (dangerous terms, I know) ; relying heavily on syntactical, grammatical, and linguistic experimentation for effect, rather than overt imagism or linear-style, narrative tropes. To say her poems are challenging would not be an understatement.
However, mccabe does a good job of straddling experimentation with readability. Her meanings, though sometimes enigmatic, are not lost in self-indulgent poetic showboating à la Post-Modern. mccabe may make you work for it, but once you’ve got it, you won’t be disappointed. Poems like “the stream trinity”, a compelling sequence, balances floaty, abstract language with vivid concrete images: “i the valley for this stream … in these/fields that roll/gently/to/wood”. In the same poem, mccabe incorporates an almost metaphysical conceit (sustained metaphor) of the stream as a spiritual place of origin, in a clearly free-verse stylized poem, displaying her alertness to poetry’s traditions as well as its tradition of innovation.
mccabe isn’t always so lofty though, and actually begins her collection with a section that might be more akin to a Johnny Cash aesthetic than a Donnian one. “how we know hearts”, reads almost like a country tune, with thick dialectic hues and a muscular-but-tender tone, typical of a Hank Williams Sr. song: “cryin’ lovin’ leavin’/uneven cowboy bearings/so far from happy/as clams”. Here, mccabe is more playful with the language, while still keeping true to her poetic.
By far, her strongest poems are in the section “land over time”. mccabe uses the motif of geology and geologic time in this section as well as drives home the theme of landscape that pervades the collection as a whole. “physical geography” is a wonderfully executed piece that uses the metaphor of landscape erosion for human erosion. The poem itself almost exhibits the same type of vulnerability as that of the subject matter: “it is almost a rule … land once weakened/fails/then falls/i am this right through”.
A major flaw in the collection is that it is way too long (6 sections, totaling 116 pages) and could have done without some of the weaker sections that stick out like a sore thumb (or thumbs), such as “the compass rose poems”, which deals too much in stick diction, maudlin tones and clichéd themes, making the poems far less memorable. Overall, shauna mccabe’s ancient hotel landscape is an exciting, well-wrought, and eclectic collection for any reader who is not interested in tired, run-of-the-mill type poetry.
ancient motel landscape, shauna mccabe Release: September 2005 poetry (BISAC: POE011000) All rights available117 pp, 6 x 9, 6 b&w photographs, trade paperBroken Jaw Press’ Cauldron Books, 6ISBN 978-1-55391-041-1 or 1-55391-041-9$19.00 CDN, $17.00 US
Thursday, March 02, 2006
the ottawa small press book fair, spring 2006 edition
span-o (the small press action network - ottawa)
presents
the ottawa small press book fair spring edition
will be held on Saturday, June 17th from noon to 5 p.m.
in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 Jack Purcell Lane; map here). contact rob at rob@track0.com to sign up for a table, etc.
General info: the ottawa small press book fair noon to 5pm (opens at 11am for exhibitors)
admission free to the public. due to increased space costs (nearly doubled) table fees have increased from $15 to $20 for exhibitors (payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset St W, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7).
full tables only. for catalog, exhibitors should send (on paper, not email) name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being looked at, & any other pertinent info, including upcoming ottawa-area events (if any).
due to the increased demand for table space, exhibitors are asked to confirm far earlier than usual. i.e. -- before, say, the day of the fair.
the fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc. happens twice a year, started in 1994 by rob mclennan & James Spyker. now run by rob mclennan thru span-o.
questions, rob@track0.com or 613 239 0337
free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. we will not be selling things for folk who cant make it, sorry.
also, always looking for volunteers to poster, move tables, that sort of thing. let me know if anyone able to do anything. thanks.
presents
the ottawa small press book fair spring edition
will be held on Saturday, June 17th from noon to 5 p.m.
in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin, at 320 Jack Purcell Lane; map here). contact rob at rob@track0.com to sign up for a table, etc.
General info: the ottawa small press book fair noon to 5pm (opens at 11am for exhibitors)
admission free to the public. due to increased space costs (nearly doubled) table fees have increased from $15 to $20 for exhibitors (payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset St W, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7).
full tables only. for catalog, exhibitors should send (on paper, not email) name of press, address, email, web address, contact person, type of publications, list of publications (with price), if submissions are being looked at, & any other pertinent info, including upcoming ottawa-area events (if any).
due to the increased demand for table space, exhibitors are asked to confirm far earlier than usual. i.e. -- before, say, the day of the fair.
the fair usually contains exhibitors with poetry books, novels, cookbooks, posters, t-shirts, graphic novels, comic books, magazines, scraps of paper, gum-ball machines with poems, 2x4s with text, etc. happens twice a year, started in 1994 by rob mclennan & James Spyker. now run by rob mclennan thru span-o.
questions, rob@track0.com or 613 239 0337
free things can be mailed for fair distribution to the same address. we will not be selling things for folk who cant make it, sorry.
also, always looking for volunteers to poster, move tables, that sort of thing. let me know if anyone able to do anything. thanks.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Jan Allen, Personal Peripherals 1-30, Stanzas, Volume 1, No 42, above/ground press
Jan Allen’s poetry juxtaposes technical and psychological jargon with original language and metaphoric abstractions. Much of her imagery is geometric and abstract, full of shapes and patterns. There are colours, there is motion and understated emotion in her work.
This chapbook is part of Stanzas, an occasional magazine for long poem/sequences put out by above/ground press. Jan Allen is a writer, visual artist and curator in Kingston, Ontario. The poems published in this series tend to be unconventional, breaking with tradition, breaking rules. Allen’s is no exception. Does she use clichés? Yes. Does she end lines with function words? Yes. And it works. Stanzas and Allen’s own poetry is part of publisher/poet rob mclennan’s on-going mission to expose readers to poetry that'll "blow yr colon" (and your semi-colon too).
It’s hard not to just quote most of the poems line by line as I find just taking out excerpts really minimizes the power and beauty of her poems, but here goes:
PP01 aesthetic alignment unit
Allen presents a snapshot of geometric images coming together: “a sudden rectangle/behind tangerine curtains”. She accurately and creatively reproduces the sounds and sights of a summer’s day in a pool by blending senses: “pounding ears brim/with light filled/densities”
PP02 anger management module
There’s lots of colour in Allen’s poems, but the colour does not feel arbitrary.
green core/gray lines/ white plastic plunger
The movement “long needles slide under the skin” is an image that stays with you; it’s haunting, sad.
PP03 anticipation modulator
more blending of senses: “I hear the tilt/in your voice.”
original language: “unexpected oranges/roll and scatter/with the logic of fruit.” This is exactly right. It’s one of those observations that just makes sense, but no one thinks of fruit as being logical.
metaphoric abstraction: “the jagged stammer of living/gives way/to the fragile/metronome of hope.”
PP04 antiprocrastination switching system (which my spell checker wants to change to ant procrastination)
Poem is strong due to its understatement; she’s talking about bombs dropping and yet the whole thing is subdued. The image of spiraling down is threaded through the poem. She has a new spin on mortality: “riding/the white shuffling/calculus of time.” It feels like your high school math teacher took art and then wrote poems. Allen’s stuff is such a mixture of art and science; logic and heart. Often when people write issue poems, they hammer it heavy into us, but not Allen. She has something to say, but she does it through understatement and imagery and this abstract language. While the titles depersonalize in some way, the content of the poems makes this very personal: “we know too much/ and too little/and still/sleek improbable jets/are dropping bombs/on distant towns.” There’s no lecturing here, which makes it all the more potent.
PP07 arousal modulator
Allen exhibits a facility with scientific language: “an infinite regression,” but places it within the context of humanity, of feeling. In this poem we have both the physical and the metaphysical. There’s beauty in her words, in the act she describes; here's the whole poem because it's my favourite:
I am close enough to see it now
the wide black pool in each eye
an infinite regression
shining back at me
I never miss the involuntary
flare of nostrils or the trace of
moisture across your brow as
flesh gathers itself
into itself
like an arsenal of angels
too long deprived of flight
PP08 bonding capacitator A [1-3]
Allen often uses repetition as a device in her poems. In this poem, the repetition works as a form of meditation: “of time alone/our time together/flows together.”
PP09 bonding capacitator B [group applications]
“some quiet/parking lot future.” You know what she means. It’s short and to the point, very little is described, yet it works.
PP010 charisma chip
Once more there is movement: circling and return, a voice’s vibrations into the “listening earth.” In many of the poems, it feels like the speaker senses something the rest of us are missing and is trying to describe it in terms we humans can understand. “don’t kid/yourself that it’s/ just physical/a charged presence/radiant/we warm ourselves/before it.”
PP011 commitment regulator
A simple description; this is another example of the juxtaposition of cold, laboratory titles juxtaposed with warm human activity, in this case the nursing of a baby. Allen uses some stock imagery: rosebud lips, tiny fists, but then gives us “the tingling release of/the white circuit of milk.” The stock images act like a lullaby of the familiar and then we are awoken by her unusual descriptions that seem so fitting to the circumstance.
PP013 credulity suppressor
A gentle lament about poets “the fibrous network/that is the act of beauty/grows brittle with misuse.” And this is what Allen is doing in her work, she’s making sure that this network does not grow brittle; she’s incorporating fresh ways of seeing the world into the old and tired, the technical and the abstract, the cold and brittle.
PP014 crisis compiler
Yet Allen is not all about the abstract, she is adept at describing the physical: “pavements sticky/with ancient circles/of chewing gum…” In this poem there is some fairly traditional sound play: sticky/brick/fix/conviction/quickly—to give this poem its sticky staccato crisis feel. She also uses the occasional simile and hers are original and fitting: “stale piss days and nights/pass into one another/like playing cards dealt/too quickly/in a tired place/where every kindness/feels like failure.”
PP015 didactic intake amplifier
More simile here and a very tight rhythm and strict diction: “sensory funnels suck/information sheaves like/layers of pressed grass/that compost quickly/in the humid convolutions/of cranial space.”
PP020 full reverse trigger
In this poem, the speaker addresses the reader directly with a command, a kind of philosophical plea: “eliminate/the bridal path/circuitry of present pursuits.” Once more we have the image of a circle, which crops up often in Allen’s poems.
I found Allen’s strongest poems to be at the beginning. There are so many poems here, with lots of original language and odd juxtapositions, ways of looking at things. In PP025 induction device for conflict resolution, Allen continues to play with sound and resorts to a play on Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month": “winter is the kindest season.” There’s lots of attention to sound in this very short poem: “kindest/kindling/culled” “flames/flicking/fingers.
PP026 inhibition override unit
This is the most surrealistic poem with strong imagery: “the yawning cries of trains” and “the blister packs/of unspent intuition.” Once more we have motion, this time it is rising: “hydrogen bubbles/rise glorious/and luminous fractals/release the white barking/elegance of thought.” Much of the poems seem to be encouraging readers to let go, to live in the moment, to override convention.
Again in PP027 lapse reducer, Allen sounds a warning: “planetary wars/are going unnoticed.” There’s another strong image “alphabet teething rings/in landfill sites/…spell out a…lament/for the supine drift/of inattention.” All the way through these poems, not paying attention, not living in the moment, letting things happen unawares, seems to be the biggest danger.
PP029 miasma lifting device
There’s hope: “the judges are growing impatient/they take their daughters/out of school and/teach them how to sing/you can hear them now/…swaying and swinging their feet/in the sloping light of afternoon.”
In the final poem, PP030 misdirected passion terminator, Allen ends with “I am considering the wisdom/of border planting/and taking/long overdue/measures against/invasive perennials.” This poem is sharp and to the point. None of Allen’s poems are long, and none of them ramble. There’s clear imagery, the carving out of concrete image from abstract metaphor and a heart that shows itself sympathetic and gently impatient with mankind. These are not sappy poems, but they are the poems of someone who cares.
I feel dissatisfied with what I’ve written here; it’s such a superficial treatment of some excellent poetry that one needs to return to again and again. My own pale purple copy is dog eared and mangled. The best thing to do is read for yourself:
rob mclennan, e-mail az421@freenet.carleton.ca or above/ground press c/o rr#1 maxville ontario Canada k9x 1t0 $20 for 5 issues or sample $4 (or large s.a.s.e) payable to rob mclennan. you can also pay $30 and get the chapbooks and little mags rob publishes that year in small brown envelopes discreetly passed to you at readings or mailed to you. I find this is a wonderful way to be exposed to the new, the now of poetry.
This chapbook is part of Stanzas, an occasional magazine for long poem/sequences put out by above/ground press. Jan Allen is a writer, visual artist and curator in Kingston, Ontario. The poems published in this series tend to be unconventional, breaking with tradition, breaking rules. Allen’s is no exception. Does she use clichés? Yes. Does she end lines with function words? Yes. And it works. Stanzas and Allen’s own poetry is part of publisher/poet rob mclennan’s on-going mission to expose readers to poetry that'll "blow yr colon" (and your semi-colon too).
It’s hard not to just quote most of the poems line by line as I find just taking out excerpts really minimizes the power and beauty of her poems, but here goes:
PP01 aesthetic alignment unit
Allen presents a snapshot of geometric images coming together: “a sudden rectangle/behind tangerine curtains”. She accurately and creatively reproduces the sounds and sights of a summer’s day in a pool by blending senses: “pounding ears brim/with light filled/densities”
PP02 anger management module
There’s lots of colour in Allen’s poems, but the colour does not feel arbitrary.
green core/gray lines/ white plastic plunger
The movement “long needles slide under the skin” is an image that stays with you; it’s haunting, sad.
PP03 anticipation modulator
more blending of senses: “I hear the tilt/in your voice.”
original language: “unexpected oranges/roll and scatter/with the logic of fruit.” This is exactly right. It’s one of those observations that just makes sense, but no one thinks of fruit as being logical.
metaphoric abstraction: “the jagged stammer of living/gives way/to the fragile/metronome of hope.”
PP04 antiprocrastination switching system (which my spell checker wants to change to ant procrastination)
Poem is strong due to its understatement; she’s talking about bombs dropping and yet the whole thing is subdued. The image of spiraling down is threaded through the poem. She has a new spin on mortality: “riding/the white shuffling/calculus of time.” It feels like your high school math teacher took art and then wrote poems. Allen’s stuff is such a mixture of art and science; logic and heart. Often when people write issue poems, they hammer it heavy into us, but not Allen. She has something to say, but she does it through understatement and imagery and this abstract language. While the titles depersonalize in some way, the content of the poems makes this very personal: “we know too much/ and too little/and still/sleek improbable jets/are dropping bombs/on distant towns.” There’s no lecturing here, which makes it all the more potent.
PP07 arousal modulator
Allen exhibits a facility with scientific language: “an infinite regression,” but places it within the context of humanity, of feeling. In this poem we have both the physical and the metaphysical. There’s beauty in her words, in the act she describes; here's the whole poem because it's my favourite:
I am close enough to see it now
the wide black pool in each eye
an infinite regression
shining back at me
I never miss the involuntary
flare of nostrils or the trace of
moisture across your brow as
flesh gathers itself
into itself
like an arsenal of angels
too long deprived of flight
PP08 bonding capacitator A [1-3]
Allen often uses repetition as a device in her poems. In this poem, the repetition works as a form of meditation: “of time alone/our time together/flows together.”
PP09 bonding capacitator B [group applications]
“some quiet/parking lot future.” You know what she means. It’s short and to the point, very little is described, yet it works.
PP010 charisma chip
Once more there is movement: circling and return, a voice’s vibrations into the “listening earth.” In many of the poems, it feels like the speaker senses something the rest of us are missing and is trying to describe it in terms we humans can understand. “don’t kid/yourself that it’s/ just physical/a charged presence/radiant/we warm ourselves/before it.”
PP011 commitment regulator
A simple description; this is another example of the juxtaposition of cold, laboratory titles juxtaposed with warm human activity, in this case the nursing of a baby. Allen uses some stock imagery: rosebud lips, tiny fists, but then gives us “the tingling release of/the white circuit of milk.” The stock images act like a lullaby of the familiar and then we are awoken by her unusual descriptions that seem so fitting to the circumstance.
PP013 credulity suppressor
A gentle lament about poets “the fibrous network/that is the act of beauty/grows brittle with misuse.” And this is what Allen is doing in her work, she’s making sure that this network does not grow brittle; she’s incorporating fresh ways of seeing the world into the old and tired, the technical and the abstract, the cold and brittle.
PP014 crisis compiler
Yet Allen is not all about the abstract, she is adept at describing the physical: “pavements sticky/with ancient circles/of chewing gum…” In this poem there is some fairly traditional sound play: sticky/brick/fix/conviction/quickly—to give this poem its sticky staccato crisis feel. She also uses the occasional simile and hers are original and fitting: “stale piss days and nights/pass into one another/like playing cards dealt/too quickly/in a tired place/where every kindness/feels like failure.”
PP015 didactic intake amplifier
More simile here and a very tight rhythm and strict diction: “sensory funnels suck/information sheaves like/layers of pressed grass/that compost quickly/in the humid convolutions/of cranial space.”
PP020 full reverse trigger
In this poem, the speaker addresses the reader directly with a command, a kind of philosophical plea: “eliminate/the bridal path/circuitry of present pursuits.” Once more we have the image of a circle, which crops up often in Allen’s poems.
I found Allen’s strongest poems to be at the beginning. There are so many poems here, with lots of original language and odd juxtapositions, ways of looking at things. In PP025 induction device for conflict resolution, Allen continues to play with sound and resorts to a play on Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month": “winter is the kindest season.” There’s lots of attention to sound in this very short poem: “kindest/kindling/culled” “flames/flicking/fingers.
PP026 inhibition override unit
This is the most surrealistic poem with strong imagery: “the yawning cries of trains” and “the blister packs/of unspent intuition.” Once more we have motion, this time it is rising: “hydrogen bubbles/rise glorious/and luminous fractals/release the white barking/elegance of thought.” Much of the poems seem to be encouraging readers to let go, to live in the moment, to override convention.
Again in PP027 lapse reducer, Allen sounds a warning: “planetary wars/are going unnoticed.” There’s another strong image “alphabet teething rings/in landfill sites/…spell out a…lament/for the supine drift/of inattention.” All the way through these poems, not paying attention, not living in the moment, letting things happen unawares, seems to be the biggest danger.
PP029 miasma lifting device
There’s hope: “the judges are growing impatient/they take their daughters/out of school and/teach them how to sing/you can hear them now/…swaying and swinging their feet/in the sloping light of afternoon.”
In the final poem, PP030 misdirected passion terminator, Allen ends with “I am considering the wisdom/of border planting/and taking/long overdue/measures against/invasive perennials.” This poem is sharp and to the point. None of Allen’s poems are long, and none of them ramble. There’s clear imagery, the carving out of concrete image from abstract metaphor and a heart that shows itself sympathetic and gently impatient with mankind. These are not sappy poems, but they are the poems of someone who cares.
I feel dissatisfied with what I’ve written here; it’s such a superficial treatment of some excellent poetry that one needs to return to again and again. My own pale purple copy is dog eared and mangled. The best thing to do is read for yourself:
rob mclennan, e-mail az421@freenet.carleton.ca or above/ground press c/o rr#1 maxville ontario Canada k9x 1t0 $20 for 5 issues or sample $4 (or large s.a.s.e) payable to rob mclennan. you can also pay $30 and get the chapbooks and little mags rob publishes that year in small brown envelopes discreetly passed to you at readings or mailed to you. I find this is a wonderful way to be exposed to the new, the now of poetry.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
a brief note on the poetry of Max Middle
Historically, so much of the poetry that has come out of the City of Ottawa has moved through the mode of the confessional lyric, in a city where modernism overstayed its welcome; moved to the point of nearly falling flat. Throughout the one hundred and fifty year history of English-language poetry in Ottawa, there have always been two predominant threads of any creative writing pursuit ― the official thread, and the nebulous other. Given the large amount of government and university employment in the city, the official thread is nearly a given, with more formally conservative forms and subject matter being almost the norm after the time of the Confederation Poets, writing another poem about the Chaudiére Rapids or Falls, with echoes of Archibald Lampman; while the other, holding to more formally experimental and/or radical poetries and poetics ― with our lack of factory space and other lower-class structures, making an entire social class nearly non-existent ― has never been large enough to group, let alone (much of the time) get further known. Think of William Hawkins in the 1960s and into the '70s, or Michael Dennis and Dennis Tourbin, and later on, Rob Manery and Louis Cabri. Think currently of jwcurry, called the best concrete and visual poet in the country, who moved here from Toronto in 1996. Not one of the official anthologies of Ottawa poetry published over the past four decades has included any of their works. Can you even name a single other member of their groups (it doesn't help, that for all they accomplished in Ottawa and beyond, both Manery and Cabri have so far only produced a single trade collection each)? It's quite a difference from Christopher Levenson's Ottawa Poetry Group, which recently put out an anthology of their thirty years in 2005, with Ottawa's Buschek Books; Levenson was one of the three founders of Arc magazine in 1978. The only alternate from that same 80s-90s period could be Colin Morton, who moved here from Alberta earlier on in the decade, who grouped himself around the poets in his Capital Poets (Ottawa ON: Oroborus, 1989), as well as the smaller group that made up the poetry performance group, First Draft, in the 1980s and beyond, starting as "radical" and moving slowly more lyric mainstream (while still working in concrete and sound); perhaps one of the few Ottawa writers that overlapped that invisible line.
Influenced by the language-centred and formally-experimental writings and performances by various members of Vancouver's Kootenay School of Writing, the late Toronto poet bpNichol and poet and Nichol bibliographer jwcurry, Ottawa poet Max Middle is one of the exceptions that makes the current rule. Born in 1970, Middle kept quiet for years, but since he started writing and performing a few years ago in Edmonton (at the Olive Reading Series), just before he returned to Ottawa, he has slowly been making himself one of the most interesting poets to come out of the city in some time. His musical and poetry performance experiment the Max Middle Sound Project, founded in 2004, has predominantly included readings and sound performances by Middle of his own works, but has also included collaborations with fiction writer Melanie Little, poet Wanda O'Connor, and poet and fiction writer Peter Norman, who performed with the group on a number of occasions, including numerous shows at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2004, and at the ottawa international writers festival in April 2005. It has been interesting to watch Middle evolve through his association with (for example) jwcurry over the past couple of years, from his own publishing and performances in sound through the Max Middle Sound Project (including a Max Middle Sound Project sound score published in an issue of Grant Wilkins' Murderous Signs; audio files are also available through the Max Middle Sound Project website at maxmiddle.com), or his own print work, from his chapbooks A Creation Song (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2004; out of print, reprinted in the first issue of ottawater) and smthg (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2005), part of the latter being reprinted in the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2005), as well as other publications such as jwcurry's 1cent, Wanda O'Connor's Impress, and as various above/ground press productions such as four broadsides, the chapbook anthology two-by-two on that oversized lifeboat, A Peter F. Yacht Club special (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2005), and various issues of the ongoing Peter F. Yacht Club (various editors/publishers).
b being still
beauty can be found
b being still
stood outside the gate
ages did was too shandy
meant much from the high place
wants mountain makes tea
mould can be lurching
ice ovr a little told
tells skimming in a float plane
slicks picked unsanguineous
safe to raise that arm again
the one with the pen in it
a tattooist decrees left to right
countermand stuff of crime
graphemes extracted simmering
man while manshie d d flew
faced me the reflection floats
in here this side of mirror
said i heard stood what was stolen
poondle basha full trash na go
alright i said fistula
genria janria chip kelta
stiff off the surface stick
stooshing mouth off walk
smooth schnorkel pipe smoker
strokes the shimmering water
a face stoking through the gate
pillows a sail on a rise futuring (smthg)
In his solo performances, the piece "run scrummee" has almost become a signature piece, making whole groups of us want to put "run scrummee" on t-shirts or banners, merging through this poem a sense both visual and vocal. One of the strengths of Middle throughout the City of Ottawa is that he not only manages to bring people to poetry readings that don't normally go to readings at all, but manages to make admirers out of them, and of reading regulars as well. There is something about hearing Max Middle, in his supreme awkwardness, that somehow completely works through a performance.
run scrummee
j U swh s y b Y
jj U so see holey
j uscrew seem only
U uscr seem Oh Y Y
U R su scu e em me
R U sum scuem meanie
run scrummee tell tell (smthg)
An Ottawa native, Middle did interact with a number of writers in town before heading to places further west, back in the mid-1990s, and was a regular at the readings Rob Manery and Louis Cabri hosted through their Experimental Writers Group (publishers of hole magazine and hole books), such as the Transparency Machine at Gallery 101, and later on, the N400 Series at the Manx Pub. In an interview published in the first issue of ottawater , Middle talked about the cultural life of Ottawa in the early 1990s, and where I ended up first encountering him, the quiet fellow that sat somewhere behind Manery and Cabri at the Manx Pub on Elgin Street:
"By ‘94, I was well into an extended period of travel, which brought me in and out of Ottawa and kept me distracted from matters relating to writing. I had attended their [Louis and Rob’s] readings starting in the spring of ‘91. At that time, the readings were being held in the old Gallery 101 space on Lisgar St near Bank St. They called them ‘The Transparency Machine’ because the poets would give an informal lecture using overheads on a transparency machine. That would form the first half of the event. The second half would be comprised of a conventional reading. One of the first ‘Transparency Machine’ talk/readings I saw at Gallery 101 was given by Jed Rasula. I seem to recall that not all of the readings incorporated a talk. I attended a two reader reading in June ‘91 given by Jeff Derksen and Deanna Ferguson. I’m not sure if they gave a talk before reading. By the autumn of ‘91 or winter of ‘92, Rob and Louis were holding readings at Arts Court in Ottawa. In that venue, there were readings given by Charles Bernstein and Erin Mouré amongst others. For the readings at Arts Court, there were critical and other texts employed. I recall a Steve McCaffery reading at Gallery 101 given under their auspices around that time again without the transparency machine.
The ‘Transparency Machine’ readings were an excellent opportunity to learn first hand from some very engaged writers about the writing process. The writers they were bringing in were generally of the sort that was attempting to innovate. They tended to have an association with language poetry. At that time, being a young feller, having to that point limited exposure to innovative poetics, I was fascinated. Here were poets expanding the parameters of what I understood as poetic form and talking about how they were approaching their work to boot!"
Over the past few performances, obviously developing his approach through conversations and performances with jwcurry, Middle has explored not only his intonation, qualifying the tones of his voice, but reading individual letters throughout a text as text themselves, such as in this poem, originally published as an above/ground press broadside. When performing it, it become as interesting to hear Middle over-pronounce the individual letters as it is to watch him physically mouth the words, in a style that almost seems related to poet Hugo Ball:
an MMSP C poem
the MMSP soundsters C
munchie pff dhaA C c
rye hymes what u wish U C
in a bag a gag C
all along aClang
C we laugh (smthg)
On Saturday, September 24th, 2005, Middle performed as part of a rare and important reading by Ottawa poet and publisher jwcurry, the first in curry's Hit'N'Run Lecture Series, called "MESSAGIO GALORE take II." Framed as "a performance by jwcurry of sound & related textu(r)al materials with additional vocal aid by Max Middle," it was held in the then-vacated bookstore space underneath curry's Chinatown apartment on Somerset Street West. Practicing daily for a week before the event for individual stretches that lasted as long as eight to ten hours, it must have been something to go over and through the material with jwcurry, considered meticulous to the extreme, and called one of the best concrete and visual poets in the country, and perhaps one of the finest sound poets as well; it could easily have been the kind of vocal training that some performers would pay good currency for. curry and Middle later performed a couple of the pieces from the reading as one-offs, in the late night hospitality suite of the fall 2005 edition of the ottawa international writers festival, including a performance of the Four Horseman piece "Hare Pronounced Hair" with the assistance of Carmel Purkis, seasonal staff of the festival bookstore, Nicholas Hoare, taking the place of the third voice from the original event, Jennifer Books. In the same interview from ottawater, Middle talked about curry's influence on his writing:
"I have learned a lot from curry: about sound poetries, visual poetries, Canadian literary history, small press in Canada, bpNichol, printing, small press publishing. Being able to see some of the works in his collection has been a real privilege. Talking to him and seeing some of the visual poetry in his collection has expanded my understanding of visual poetry. Viewing visual poetry by Shaunt Basmajian, David UU and bpNichol has given me a sense of the different ways in which visual poetry has been and can be approached. The visual sequences in curry’s book Objectionable Perspectives have been enlightening.
It was a rare and edifying experience to see/hear curry read with Maria Erskine last February [2004] as part of the Poetry 101 series. The reading strategies, like reading above the audience on a staircase, reading into water, wrapping himself up in a sheet, which I found theatrical but which curry denied having any theatrical import were highly inventive and brilliantly executed. It was the first time I heard curry read sound poetry. His method of reading visual poetry, taking a text superficially ‘unreadable’ and interpreting it in speech and sound is one that yields fascinating results. The essay that he read was highly informative. Dorothy Howard, editor of Raw Nervz, sent me a copy of the issue of Raw Nervz in which that essay was published."
Influenced by the language-centred and formally-experimental writings and performances by various members of Vancouver's Kootenay School of Writing, the late Toronto poet bpNichol and poet and Nichol bibliographer jwcurry, Ottawa poet Max Middle is one of the exceptions that makes the current rule. Born in 1970, Middle kept quiet for years, but since he started writing and performing a few years ago in Edmonton (at the Olive Reading Series), just before he returned to Ottawa, he has slowly been making himself one of the most interesting poets to come out of the city in some time. His musical and poetry performance experiment the Max Middle Sound Project, founded in 2004, has predominantly included readings and sound performances by Middle of his own works, but has also included collaborations with fiction writer Melanie Little, poet Wanda O'Connor, and poet and fiction writer Peter Norman, who performed with the group on a number of occasions, including numerous shows at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2004, and at the ottawa international writers festival in April 2005. It has been interesting to watch Middle evolve through his association with (for example) jwcurry over the past couple of years, from his own publishing and performances in sound through the Max Middle Sound Project (including a Max Middle Sound Project sound score published in an issue of Grant Wilkins' Murderous Signs; audio files are also available through the Max Middle Sound Project website at maxmiddle.com), or his own print work, from his chapbooks A Creation Song (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2004; out of print, reprinted in the first issue of ottawater) and smthg (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2005), part of the latter being reprinted in the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2005), as well as other publications such as jwcurry's 1cent, Wanda O'Connor's Impress, and as various above/ground press productions such as four broadsides, the chapbook anthology two-by-two on that oversized lifeboat, A Peter F. Yacht Club special (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2005), and various issues of the ongoing Peter F. Yacht Club (various editors/publishers).
b being still
beauty can be found
b being still
stood outside the gate
ages did was too shandy
meant much from the high place
wants mountain makes tea
mould can be lurching
ice ovr a little told
tells skimming in a float plane
slicks picked unsanguineous
safe to raise that arm again
the one with the pen in it
a tattooist decrees left to right
countermand stuff of crime
graphemes extracted simmering
man while manshie d d flew
faced me the reflection floats
in here this side of mirror
said i heard stood what was stolen
poondle basha full trash na go
alright i said fistula
genria janria chip kelta
stiff off the surface stick
stooshing mouth off walk
smooth schnorkel pipe smoker
strokes the shimmering water
a face stoking through the gate
pillows a sail on a rise futuring (smthg)
In his solo performances, the piece "run scrummee" has almost become a signature piece, making whole groups of us want to put "run scrummee" on t-shirts or banners, merging through this poem a sense both visual and vocal. One of the strengths of Middle throughout the City of Ottawa is that he not only manages to bring people to poetry readings that don't normally go to readings at all, but manages to make admirers out of them, and of reading regulars as well. There is something about hearing Max Middle, in his supreme awkwardness, that somehow completely works through a performance.
run scrummee
j U swh s y b Y
jj U so see holey
j uscrew seem only
U uscr seem Oh Y Y
U R su scu e em me
R U sum scuem meanie
run scrummee tell tell (smthg)
An Ottawa native, Middle did interact with a number of writers in town before heading to places further west, back in the mid-1990s, and was a regular at the readings Rob Manery and Louis Cabri hosted through their Experimental Writers Group (publishers of hole magazine and hole books), such as the Transparency Machine at Gallery 101, and later on, the N400 Series at the Manx Pub. In an interview published in the first issue of ottawater , Middle talked about the cultural life of Ottawa in the early 1990s, and where I ended up first encountering him, the quiet fellow that sat somewhere behind Manery and Cabri at the Manx Pub on Elgin Street:
"By ‘94, I was well into an extended period of travel, which brought me in and out of Ottawa and kept me distracted from matters relating to writing. I had attended their [Louis and Rob’s] readings starting in the spring of ‘91. At that time, the readings were being held in the old Gallery 101 space on Lisgar St near Bank St. They called them ‘The Transparency Machine’ because the poets would give an informal lecture using overheads on a transparency machine. That would form the first half of the event. The second half would be comprised of a conventional reading. One of the first ‘Transparency Machine’ talk/readings I saw at Gallery 101 was given by Jed Rasula. I seem to recall that not all of the readings incorporated a talk. I attended a two reader reading in June ‘91 given by Jeff Derksen and Deanna Ferguson. I’m not sure if they gave a talk before reading. By the autumn of ‘91 or winter of ‘92, Rob and Louis were holding readings at Arts Court in Ottawa. In that venue, there were readings given by Charles Bernstein and Erin Mouré amongst others. For the readings at Arts Court, there were critical and other texts employed. I recall a Steve McCaffery reading at Gallery 101 given under their auspices around that time again without the transparency machine.
The ‘Transparency Machine’ readings were an excellent opportunity to learn first hand from some very engaged writers about the writing process. The writers they were bringing in were generally of the sort that was attempting to innovate. They tended to have an association with language poetry. At that time, being a young feller, having to that point limited exposure to innovative poetics, I was fascinated. Here were poets expanding the parameters of what I understood as poetic form and talking about how they were approaching their work to boot!"
Over the past few performances, obviously developing his approach through conversations and performances with jwcurry, Middle has explored not only his intonation, qualifying the tones of his voice, but reading individual letters throughout a text as text themselves, such as in this poem, originally published as an above/ground press broadside. When performing it, it become as interesting to hear Middle over-pronounce the individual letters as it is to watch him physically mouth the words, in a style that almost seems related to poet Hugo Ball:
an MMSP C poem
the MMSP soundsters C
munchie pff dhaA C c
rye hymes what u wish U C
in a bag a gag C
all along aClang
C we laugh (smthg)
On Saturday, September 24th, 2005, Middle performed as part of a rare and important reading by Ottawa poet and publisher jwcurry, the first in curry's Hit'N'Run Lecture Series, called "MESSAGIO GALORE take II." Framed as "a performance by jwcurry of sound & related textu(r)al materials with additional vocal aid by Max Middle," it was held in the then-vacated bookstore space underneath curry's Chinatown apartment on Somerset Street West. Practicing daily for a week before the event for individual stretches that lasted as long as eight to ten hours, it must have been something to go over and through the material with jwcurry, considered meticulous to the extreme, and called one of the best concrete and visual poets in the country, and perhaps one of the finest sound poets as well; it could easily have been the kind of vocal training that some performers would pay good currency for. curry and Middle later performed a couple of the pieces from the reading as one-offs, in the late night hospitality suite of the fall 2005 edition of the ottawa international writers festival, including a performance of the Four Horseman piece "Hare Pronounced Hair" with the assistance of Carmel Purkis, seasonal staff of the festival bookstore, Nicholas Hoare, taking the place of the third voice from the original event, Jennifer Books. In the same interview from ottawater, Middle talked about curry's influence on his writing:
"I have learned a lot from curry: about sound poetries, visual poetries, Canadian literary history, small press in Canada, bpNichol, printing, small press publishing. Being able to see some of the works in his collection has been a real privilege. Talking to him and seeing some of the visual poetry in his collection has expanded my understanding of visual poetry. Viewing visual poetry by Shaunt Basmajian, David UU and bpNichol has given me a sense of the different ways in which visual poetry has been and can be approached. The visual sequences in curry’s book Objectionable Perspectives have been enlightening.
It was a rare and edifying experience to see/hear curry read with Maria Erskine last February [2004] as part of the Poetry 101 series. The reading strategies, like reading above the audience on a staircase, reading into water, wrapping himself up in a sheet, which I found theatrical but which curry denied having any theatrical import were highly inventive and brilliantly executed. It was the first time I heard curry read sound poetry. His method of reading visual poetry, taking a text superficially ‘unreadable’ and interpreting it in speech and sound is one that yields fascinating results. The essay that he read was highly informative. Dorothy Howard, editor of Raw Nervz, sent me a copy of the issue of Raw Nervz in which that essay was published."
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Poetry Read in Silence
At the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter you naturally read a lot about poetry readings, slams and performances: those subterranean gatherings that make up a vital part of the city's literary culture. Great stuff, some of them. But their social atmosphere is hardly likely to recapture that life-changing sense of discovery we experienced, most of us as teenagers, when poetry first lifted us out of the world of everyday and gave us a glimpse of that mythic space where life is tragic and lyrical.
To let poetry move us that deeply, at the very least we need to be able to give it our full concentration. That means hearing every word without being distracted by a waiter clinking glasses or a barman tapping a new keg; by doubts about the fire exit; or by audience members too nervous to listen, too busy rehearsing or (worse) scribbling down the poems they are about to read in the open set.
Poetry is sustained as much by the private transports of thousands of people reading in silence as by all the schools and festivals and gimmicks that attract media attention. As Donald Hall wrote last spring in the American Poetry Review: "Poetry out loud is never quite as beautiful as poetry read in silence." Yes, there may be other things poetry can do, besides being beautiful, but it won't do anything as well as it might unless it has the reader's full attention.
The ideal spot to find the silence conducive to reading poetry is of course at home, stretched out on a sofa for the long night of insomnia James Joyce required of his ideal reader. But poetry's comforts are just as important to the homeless as to the comfortable. So here are some suggestions in case you find yourself in Ottawa between flights, or between flats, and in need of poetry's lift.
If you happened to read Donald Hall's comments when they first came out in APR, you might have been standing in front of the litmag stand at Mags & Fags on Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa, a source of the latest poetry journals and tabloids. Or you might have been in the periodicals reading room of Ottawa U.'s Morissette Library, or across town at Carleton U. These are the only institutions that can afford to subscribe to even a decent sampling of the books and magazines where today's poetry subsists, and you don't need to be a student to go and look at them. Unfortunately, neither university provides a spacious, comfortable, scenic place to immerse yourself in your reading. But their shelves offer an ever-changing selection of new poetry that, at least at first, has to excite any genuine poetry enthusiast.
The Public Library's poetry collection is spotty, but at least you may borrow them and take them home to read in the bathtub. While at the central library, stop in at the Ottawa Room and let Brian Silcoff show you some of the burgeoning collection of poetry books and ephemera from the capital city.
Bookstores should be natural places to find and read poetry. As it is, Chapters is a convenient place to sip a $3 cup of coffee, or to browse the most often reprinted poetry titles, but you can't do both at the same time. The few remaining independent bookstores, like Collected Works and Mother Tongue, are more welcoming but almost as limited in the poetry inventory they can afford to carry on their shelves.
The used bookstores that dot Dalhousie and Bank streets provide a curious scattering of poetry, and most are around the corner from a coffee shop where, with concentration, caffeine and some really strong poetry, you may be able to create your own silence in the midst of a city of bureaucrats running scared. And if the poetry search has left you with a thirst for something stronger, you can find a quiet corner, and a few loaner books, at the Manx Pub on Elgin. You might even be able to discuss your latest finds with poet-host David O'Meara.
Poems, being relatively short, ought to be desirable companions for busy people on the go. Canada's former poet laureate, George Bowering, has explained that he reads poems during commercials between innings of televised baseball games. Some of my friends keep poetry magazines in the bathroom for just such occasions. Again this year, riders on OCTranspo are able to contemplate short poems posted on the advertising panels above the fellow-passengers' heads. But even a short poem can demand more of a reader than a temporary suspension of impatience. To get the real thrill of extreme poetry, you need time and space to yourself.
Now in midwinter, I am looking forward to reading outdoors again. I especially seek out riverbanks, where the white noise of rushing water cancels out traffic sounds and the poetry can have its say. Come spring, I'll put a poetry book in my pocket and go looking for a bench or a sun-warmed stone on the banks of the Rideau near Hog's Back, or above the Chaudière on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. If you see me there reading, please don't interrupt.
To let poetry move us that deeply, at the very least we need to be able to give it our full concentration. That means hearing every word without being distracted by a waiter clinking glasses or a barman tapping a new keg; by doubts about the fire exit; or by audience members too nervous to listen, too busy rehearsing or (worse) scribbling down the poems they are about to read in the open set.
Poetry is sustained as much by the private transports of thousands of people reading in silence as by all the schools and festivals and gimmicks that attract media attention. As Donald Hall wrote last spring in the American Poetry Review: "Poetry out loud is never quite as beautiful as poetry read in silence." Yes, there may be other things poetry can do, besides being beautiful, but it won't do anything as well as it might unless it has the reader's full attention.
The ideal spot to find the silence conducive to reading poetry is of course at home, stretched out on a sofa for the long night of insomnia James Joyce required of his ideal reader. But poetry's comforts are just as important to the homeless as to the comfortable. So here are some suggestions in case you find yourself in Ottawa between flights, or between flats, and in need of poetry's lift.
If you happened to read Donald Hall's comments when they first came out in APR, you might have been standing in front of the litmag stand at Mags & Fags on Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa, a source of the latest poetry journals and tabloids. Or you might have been in the periodicals reading room of Ottawa U.'s Morissette Library, or across town at Carleton U. These are the only institutions that can afford to subscribe to even a decent sampling of the books and magazines where today's poetry subsists, and you don't need to be a student to go and look at them. Unfortunately, neither university provides a spacious, comfortable, scenic place to immerse yourself in your reading. But their shelves offer an ever-changing selection of new poetry that, at least at first, has to excite any genuine poetry enthusiast.
The Public Library's poetry collection is spotty, but at least you may borrow them and take them home to read in the bathtub. While at the central library, stop in at the Ottawa Room and let Brian Silcoff show you some of the burgeoning collection of poetry books and ephemera from the capital city.
Bookstores should be natural places to find and read poetry. As it is, Chapters is a convenient place to sip a $3 cup of coffee, or to browse the most often reprinted poetry titles, but you can't do both at the same time. The few remaining independent bookstores, like Collected Works and Mother Tongue, are more welcoming but almost as limited in the poetry inventory they can afford to carry on their shelves.
The used bookstores that dot Dalhousie and Bank streets provide a curious scattering of poetry, and most are around the corner from a coffee shop where, with concentration, caffeine and some really strong poetry, you may be able to create your own silence in the midst of a city of bureaucrats running scared. And if the poetry search has left you with a thirst for something stronger, you can find a quiet corner, and a few loaner books, at the Manx Pub on Elgin. You might even be able to discuss your latest finds with poet-host David O'Meara.
Poems, being relatively short, ought to be desirable companions for busy people on the go. Canada's former poet laureate, George Bowering, has explained that he reads poems during commercials between innings of televised baseball games. Some of my friends keep poetry magazines in the bathroom for just such occasions. Again this year, riders on OCTranspo are able to contemplate short poems posted on the advertising panels above the fellow-passengers' heads. But even a short poem can demand more of a reader than a temporary suspension of impatience. To get the real thrill of extreme poetry, you need time and space to yourself.
Now in midwinter, I am looking forward to reading outdoors again. I especially seek out riverbanks, where the white noise of rushing water cancels out traffic sounds and the poetry can have its say. Come spring, I'll put a poetry book in my pocket and go looking for a bench or a sun-warmed stone on the banks of the Rideau near Hog's Back, or above the Chaudière on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. If you see me there reading, please don't interrupt.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Michael Dennis: All Those Miles Yet To Go (LyricalMyrical, 2005)
First a warning, this collection of poems was published in a limited edition of 50 copies and is no doubt sold out by now. When I was at the launch last summer at the Invisible Cinema, the books were selling like Beaver Tails on the Canal during Winterlude. So why bother to write about it? Because it’s the most recent of a local poet’s work and also because the poet deserves recognition for this refreshing no bullshit collection of poems. If we are very lucky, cross our fingers and hold our breath till we turn blue, perhaps a second print run will occur. The book is beautifully hand made using recycled covers.
In All Those Miles Yet To Go, Michael Dennis mingles hard, straight-forward observation of nitty gritty life with metaphor. The speaker of these poems is the observer, the outsider looking through window, the worker who has taken on many bottom-of-the-barrel jobs, the documenter of nightmarish memories from childhood, the dope smoker, the wine drinker, and above all the “almost lonely” man who struggles and gets by.
The imagery of Dennis’ poems is concrete, at times lyrical, always surprising and memorable. “you can hear the soft hum of sugar/beating through the pure energy of flight” (if this is beauty). In stars on the ceiling, poems are sirens “coming and going/in the distance/but none close enough/to see. In driving a road is a “black snake.” In Miles to go before I sleep, the night is described as “shadowy…rustling around inside the car.” You have to smile at the corny and playful double entendre here: Miles Davis and miles of distance.
Some poems muse philosophical on the state of the world. Dennis portrays the world with both reverence and irreverence at the same time. In this is how I see the world 2, a man is attacked by a vicious pit bull and the three teenage girls who try to control their pet have nothing more to say than “bad dog.” In if there is beauty, the birds in their purity “suggest lessons/that we stumble upon/ in spite of ourselves”. In another history lesson, Dennis describes the delicacy and respect devoted to wrapping up the dress of a woman who’d been a prisoner of war. The tasks described are straightforward and caring. All we can do is remember, respect and move on.
The vocabulary of these poems is unpretentious with adjectives like long, short, dark, shiny, yet Dennis manages to create believable and memorable portraits of his world. There are no references to obscure mythology in these poems. This isn’t a myth; this is real life. It is a world populated by idiots, wife abusers, overdosing drug addicts, dogs smarter than their owners and strangers who “pollute the news and the newspapers” (my own bed).
There is a surprising yet understated precision to Dennis’ language that it is important to note. In the days are running and then some, the speaker “shoveled the frozen dust of a foreman’s whim/out of a Northern Ontario winter and a Falconbridge mine.” The imagery is startling and unforgettable.
Like poets such as Charles Bukowski, Michael Dennis describes poverty, getting by, drinking, the seedy side of things; yet somehow there is hope and there is always irony: Neighbourhood Services delivers furniture quickly (those first few weeks).
And then there is the pain of childhood memory: having experience with belligerent drunks (Mr Silvers), the description of rape by an uncle (where memories are made). This poem is particularly potent. Dennis piles up a description of ordinary memories and then flashes to an incident of sexual abuse, accurately depicting the blankness that the abused returns to when something jars the memory: “a white light harsh jolt” as involuntary and unexpected as a sneeze, but it “hangs around like a virus.” Here Dennis is reminiscent of T. Anders Carson who also writes about abuse. It’s an ugly subject and needs to be tackled in the open.
There’s humility in the poems of this collection at times: “I want more than my share/and I apologize for that.” But at the same time there’s that underlying recognition of mortality: “I’ll want less soon/I’m sure of it” (my want list). Many of Dennis’ poems are concerned with mortality and the desire to live: “I want to sleep through the night/and wake up in the morning.” Yet at the same time, there is a reassurance that despite all the pain and struggle, one can survive: “I’ve…always sort of trusted fate/ to feed me” (check up).
Dennis is refreshingly honest in his willingness to portray the struggle to get by, writing poems about failure and being a “world class fuck up,” of sitting on the toilet wrong and having piss leak onto one’s pants. “my failures aren’t usually/quite so obvious/but/perhaps I’m finally/mastering and discovering/my true calling” (it’s on a Wednesday morning that he realizes his life work…). In motor line, Dennis describes a job on the assembly line: “in ten minutes/I was on the line/one engine every seventeen seconds/all the centuries lined up/before and after me/as I used up every/part/of my first chance/and then my second.”
Despite the struggle portrayed, there’s optimism in Michael Dennis’ poems: “this evening/like most others//better than he had hoped for” (dinner with red wine).
The good news is that much of Michael Dennis’ poetry can be found here:
http://www.boneheadmusic.com/mdennis.htm.
You can stop holding your breath now.
In All Those Miles Yet To Go, Michael Dennis mingles hard, straight-forward observation of nitty gritty life with metaphor. The speaker of these poems is the observer, the outsider looking through window, the worker who has taken on many bottom-of-the-barrel jobs, the documenter of nightmarish memories from childhood, the dope smoker, the wine drinker, and above all the “almost lonely” man who struggles and gets by.
The imagery of Dennis’ poems is concrete, at times lyrical, always surprising and memorable. “you can hear the soft hum of sugar/beating through the pure energy of flight” (if this is beauty). In stars on the ceiling, poems are sirens “coming and going/in the distance/but none close enough/to see. In driving a road is a “black snake.” In Miles to go before I sleep, the night is described as “shadowy…rustling around inside the car.” You have to smile at the corny and playful double entendre here: Miles Davis and miles of distance.
Some poems muse philosophical on the state of the world. Dennis portrays the world with both reverence and irreverence at the same time. In this is how I see the world 2, a man is attacked by a vicious pit bull and the three teenage girls who try to control their pet have nothing more to say than “bad dog.” In if there is beauty, the birds in their purity “suggest lessons/that we stumble upon/ in spite of ourselves”. In another history lesson, Dennis describes the delicacy and respect devoted to wrapping up the dress of a woman who’d been a prisoner of war. The tasks described are straightforward and caring. All we can do is remember, respect and move on.
The vocabulary of these poems is unpretentious with adjectives like long, short, dark, shiny, yet Dennis manages to create believable and memorable portraits of his world. There are no references to obscure mythology in these poems. This isn’t a myth; this is real life. It is a world populated by idiots, wife abusers, overdosing drug addicts, dogs smarter than their owners and strangers who “pollute the news and the newspapers” (my own bed).
There is a surprising yet understated precision to Dennis’ language that it is important to note. In the days are running and then some, the speaker “shoveled the frozen dust of a foreman’s whim/out of a Northern Ontario winter and a Falconbridge mine.” The imagery is startling and unforgettable.
Like poets such as Charles Bukowski, Michael Dennis describes poverty, getting by, drinking, the seedy side of things; yet somehow there is hope and there is always irony: Neighbourhood Services delivers furniture quickly (those first few weeks).
And then there is the pain of childhood memory: having experience with belligerent drunks (Mr Silvers), the description of rape by an uncle (where memories are made). This poem is particularly potent. Dennis piles up a description of ordinary memories and then flashes to an incident of sexual abuse, accurately depicting the blankness that the abused returns to when something jars the memory: “a white light harsh jolt” as involuntary and unexpected as a sneeze, but it “hangs around like a virus.” Here Dennis is reminiscent of T. Anders Carson who also writes about abuse. It’s an ugly subject and needs to be tackled in the open.
There’s humility in the poems of this collection at times: “I want more than my share/and I apologize for that.” But at the same time there’s that underlying recognition of mortality: “I’ll want less soon/I’m sure of it” (my want list). Many of Dennis’ poems are concerned with mortality and the desire to live: “I want to sleep through the night/and wake up in the morning.” Yet at the same time, there is a reassurance that despite all the pain and struggle, one can survive: “I’ve…always sort of trusted fate/ to feed me” (check up).
Dennis is refreshingly honest in his willingness to portray the struggle to get by, writing poems about failure and being a “world class fuck up,” of sitting on the toilet wrong and having piss leak onto one’s pants. “my failures aren’t usually/quite so obvious/but/perhaps I’m finally/mastering and discovering/my true calling” (it’s on a Wednesday morning that he realizes his life work…). In motor line, Dennis describes a job on the assembly line: “in ten minutes/I was on the line/one engine every seventeen seconds/all the centuries lined up/before and after me/as I used up every/part/of my first chance/and then my second.”
Despite the struggle portrayed, there’s optimism in Michael Dennis’ poems: “this evening/like most others//better than he had hoped for” (dinner with red wine).
The good news is that much of Michael Dennis’ poetry can be found here:
http://www.boneheadmusic.com/mdennis.htm.
You can stop holding your breath now.
Monday, January 16, 2006
notes on geography: Meredith Quartermain, John Newlove, William Hawkins & The Ottawa City Project
a private life
I want to build houses in the dusk
of a late century
mud pits smudged with human feet
shapely cusps
sawdust grain cupped in my eyes
soft drywall smooth on beams and posts
prism, window
gather inside
– Julia Williams, MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS
For years I’ve been interested in how various poets across Canada, through individual poems or collections, write their own geography, and increasingly over the past decade or two, writing their cities as opposed to bare country; even writing their suburbs (not just ryan fitzpatrick's Ogden or Jon Paul Fiorentino's Transcona; does anybody remember John McAuley's most brilliant Nothing Ever Happens in Pointe-Claire? (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1977)). To write of any location enters that place into myth, the myth of the city. There is the city, and then there is the dream of the city. And aren't these definitions of self always self-definitions? Where does a book or a writer hold their boundaries? As Monty Reid wrote in his essay "Small Town, Small World" from the anthology Trace: Prairie Writers on Writing (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1986):
"Small towns, with their knowledge that they do not control everything, admit the tensions and thus re-create a place for the subject, perhaps articulate the subject in a new way, rifted by tensions it cannot control but dreaming nonetheless of meanings. Or they may provide a model for the subject as some other social context, marginalized but neither cynical nor indifferent. The subject's place must necessarily be created before the reader can again be engaged, can find a place for identification."
In Vancouver, it includes Daphne Marlatt’s Vancouver Poems (Toronto ON: Ryerson Press, 1972), George Bowering rewriting Rilke’s Duino Elegies into his Kerrisdale Elegies (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1986), or his time at Sir George Williams at the tail end of the 1960s in his collection The Concrete Island: Montreal Poems (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1977), and more recently, Meredith Quartermain’s Vancouver Walking (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005). bpNichol wrote Toronto streets more obviously throughout The Martyrology Book V (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1982); and then there’s Stephen Cain’s Torontology (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2002), Joe Blades’ own song to the St. John River (the river that runs through the city of Fredericton) in the collection River Suite (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 1998), and Leonard Cohen, through almost every collection, who worked his own magic around Montreal streets, cafés and back alleys. Even more recently, Calgary poet Julia Williams, a few months before her collection The Sink House (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2004) published MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2004). In his essay "Mapping Raymond Souster's Toronto" in The Canadian Modernists Meet (Ottawa ON: The University of Ottawa Press, 2005), Stephen Cain writes "That the city is an essential component of literary modernism–as image, as cite, as trope–has long been accepted in modernist studies. As Michel de Certeau most succinctly notes, the city 'is simultaneously the machinery and the hero of modernity.'" He goes on to say:
"For much of the modernist period, this city appears absent from Canadian poetry, and it is not until the rise of postmodernism, post-colonialism, and feminism that sustained and concrete examinations of Toronto and its districts begin to appear: Joe Rosenblatt's Kensington Market, the Annex environs of bpNichol's The Martyrology Book 5, the punk bars and Queen Street watering holes of Lynn Crosbie's "Alphabet City," and the city centre of Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies.
Yet, long before Lee was officially made the poet laureate of Toronto, Raymond Souster was the acknowledged poetic chronicler of Toronto. Indeed, Souster has been represented, in both the popular media and in academic criticism, as the poet of Toronto for much of the twentieth century. While certain other modernist writers have occasionally used Toronto as a subject for their poetry–such as Miriam Waddington, and Dorothy Livesay in her "Queen City" suite–it is only Souster who has consistently returned to Toronto as subject and inspiration for his verse over a lengthy poetic career of nearly half a century. In doing so, Souster has created a significant body of work that explores the site of urban modernism, and an investigation of his work raises questions about aesthetic representations of the city and its functions in the context of Canadian literary modernism."
From modernism to post-modernism, then, as cities are less the machinery that surrounds than a part of the environment itself, that includes the author and whoever else exists in the world. For Winnipeg-born Montreal author Jon Paul Fiorentino, writing the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona as a thread through all of his poetry collections. In a recent issue of dANDelion (Number 2, Volume 29, “the poetic project.” Calgary AB, 2004), Fiorentino writes specifically of the piece “Transcona lol” from Hello Serotonin (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2004):
I officially began my obsession with my hometown of Transcona with the publication of Transcona Fragments (Winnipeg: Cyclops Press, 2002). My Transcona poems are nostalgic and digressive–heavily influenced by Seed Catalogue by Robert Kroetsch and Paterson by William Carlos Williams. Transcona lol uses the idiom of the internet chat room as its primary rhetorical strategy. It fits well into the larger Hello Serotonin project, which is immersed in the language of brain chemistry, pharmaceutical recreation, and geographical mythology. Transcona, a slowly dying railway town, persists in this collection–it is my Paterson.
In the capital, less known but no less important, was William Hawkins’ own Ottawa Poems (Kitchener ON: Weed/Flower Press, 1966), a small chapbook of twenty poems on the city he’s lived in his whole life.
#4
What had she, Queen Victoria, in mind
naming this place, Ottawa, capital?
Ah coolness, he said,
who dug coolness.
This crazy river-abounding town
where people are quietly
following some hesitant
form of evolution
arranged on television
from Toronto.
where girls are all
possible fucks
in the long dull summernights
& Mounties more image
than reality.
– William Hawkins, Ottawa Poems
When I first entered Ottawa at nineteen, a young know-it-all buck wandering Bank Street and filling notebooks with reams of bad poems on city streets, the poems of Michael Dennis, for example, were extremely important to me. Here was a poet just a decade or two ahead of me, writing poems on the same Ottawa streets, giving me a sort of permission to do the same, whether in his wayne gretzky in the house of the sleeping beauties (Toronto ON: Lowlife Publishing, 1987), what we remember and what we forget (Hull QC: The Bobo Press, 1993), or bookstore window project, poems for jessica-flynn (Ottawa ON: Not One Cent of Subsidy Press, 1986). I can still remember the stacks of jessica-flynn that sat on the shelf in the early 1990s, hidden in a corner of the second floor with all the other poetry, in the now-defunct Food for Thought Books on Clarence Street. Only three dollars each; I wanted to purchase the whole lot, and give them to friends.
They say, to understand a place, you have to know its stories. Other authors have taken geographic ownership of their cities, and in Ottawa, the fiction on the city nearly abounds, working from Elizabeth Hay to Elisabeth Harvor to André Alexis' two Ottawa books, the short story collection Despair, and Other Stories of Ottawa (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1994) and Childhood (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 1998), and in Colin McAdam's novel of Ottawa's 1960s in Some Great Thing (Vancouver BC: Raincoast Books, 2004). In poetry, Ottawa for the longest time has only been claimed in the most subtle ways, existing more in occasional pieces by writers such as John Newlove, Judith Fitzgerald, John Barton and Eli Mandel. I wonder in part if this is because of the supposed transient nature of the City of Ottawa; how many writers can even claim Ottawa as home and birthplace? William Hawkins and Blaine Marchand were born here, but only Hawkins has produced a book lately, his first collection in thirty-one years (spending his days as a Blue Line cab driver since the early 1970s), the collection Dancing Alone: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press / cauldron books, 2005). Other writers, such as Norman Levine, Elizabeth Smart, Nick Power, Gail Scott and Margaret Atwood were born and sometimes raised in the Capital, but more often than not left as soon as it was possible. I was born here, but almost immediately left (put up for adoption through Cornwall Children's Aid), and didn’t “return” until I had completed high school as yet another sheer accident of geography; but one grade thirteen credit short of getting into Concordia University in Montreal, I sat three hours in Henry Beissel's office, watching his frustration on the phone, as the administration repeated to him how they couldn't let me in the school to participate in the Creative Writing program. Where else but go to Ottawa; with the more open-door policy of Carleton University (I lasted three weeks), moving two hours west to follow a girl. There was no consideration of returning home. It could easily have been so very different.
John Newlove (d. 2003), Colin Morton, John Barton (who left for Victoria, British Columbia in 2004), Anita Dolman and Nadine McInnis all came from the prairies; Michael Dennis and Dennis Tourbin from London and Port Dalhousie, respectively (both by way of Peterborough); Stephen Brockwell came from Montreal; David O'Meara and his friend Ken Babstock grew up in Pembroke, just up the Ottawa Valley; Anita Lahey and Wanda O'Connor hail from the east coast. Is anyone else actually from here?
How different is this from, say, Montreal or Toronto? Read the biographies of the contributors to the annual Headlight Anthology published by the creative writing department at Concordia University, and see the range of the authors' points-of-origin. Is it simply easier to be absorbed into the dynamic of Montreal than it is in Ottawa?
IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA
The streets are full of overweight corporals,
of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia
of a capital city, struggling through the snow.
There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument
is stroking it incisively, the machine
in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.
It is not illegal to be unhappy.
A shadowy technician says alternately,
Breathe, and, You may stop now.
It is not illegal to be unhappy.
– John Newlove, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL and other poems (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 1999)
When I was contemplating my own collection of Ottawa pieces, I considered the anniversaries, including the 150th anniversary of the City of Ottawa in 2005, and the 150th anniversary of Queen Victoria naming us capital city to the Dominion of Canada coming up in 2007. It seemed the most obvious time to push anything Ottawa-related. As much as I consider myself a resident of Glengarry County, where I have not lived since 1989 and might never live again (until I perhaps retire), my personal geography feels split in two, as this the city where I was not only born, but where my adopted mother grew (the first of her family hospital born, in the same building I arrived, nearly thirty years later), and where I have remained since I left home, and feel no need to leave; the city my daughter helps keep me to.
The uncompleted manuscript of The Ottawa City Project works to write various thematic sections in different styles; I wanted the name to reflect the more conservative, even bureaucratic aspects of the city, and the myth of the city, while at the same time working the manuscript as a whole through sections that go completely against it. One section has already appeared as an issue of the long poem journal STANZAS, the 39-part piece "ottawa poems (blue notes)" (2005), and fragments of another section, "shipbuilding," to focus more on the Ottawa River, have started appearing in scattered journals.
shipbuilding (foundation
you were writing a paper on marriage
& wherein lies the question
, a question of lies
i was working on a poem
on the ottawa river
how you cant step into
the same truth twice
arriving too early for dinner, i read
an essay on homemade beer
by paul quarrington
you couldnt work with me in the room
i tried not to laugh out loud
at the essay, not at you,
half a glass of merlot
i could tell that you
were not impressed
i pictured a lemon, the shape
of an hour
– The Ottawa City Project, "shipbuilding"
My goal with The Ottawa City Project is to reference different aspects of the city, not to attempt to represent the city as a whole. I might live in the city, but I can only be aware of a part; as much living as observing, and both are finite, after all. Compared to me, the city seems infinite, large and almost unknowable in any way but in parts. I am the city, of the city. I have still never stood at the corner of Baseline and Merivale (nor do I feel the need to). Call me, if you need to, a Centretown boy.
Not that the city has never been written of: a number of the Confederation Poets of the late 1800s and early 1900s lived and worked in the city for various government departments, and it held like a bad joke that, if you hadn’t written a poem on the Chaudiere Falls or Rapids, you weren’t really an Ottawa poet. One of the strongholds of poetry in the late 19th century, Ottawa modernism held strong and overstayed its welcome, writing too far into twentieth century. Some of the most interesting poems about the city over the past few decades have been written by non-residents, including Eli Mandel, Judith Fitzgerald and a breathtaking array of Ottawa poems by former resident George Elliott Clarke included in his collection Black (Vancouver BC: Polestar Press, 2006; poems that also appeared in the first issue of the online ottawater), a follow-up to his collection Blue (Vancouver BC: Polestar Press, 2001). John Bell even edited a whole collection of pieces about the City of Ottawa, from both locals and outsiders, the collection Ottawa, A Literary Portrait (Pottersfield NS: Pottersfield Press, 1992), published as a follow-up to a similar book he edited on Halifax (Pottersfield NS: Pottersfield Press, 1990), that included the work of such writers as Norman Levine, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan and Milton Acorn. As Bell wrote in his introduction:
"Not all the writers – be they short- or long term residents – who have played a role in the literary history of Ottawa have chosen to portray the city in their work. Some, like Robert Stead, George Elliott Clarke, and Benjamin Sulte – and the many other Western, Maritime, and Quebec writers identified with the capital over the years – were, in a sense, expatriates who often found that distance compelled them to write primarily about the communities they had left behind. (Similarly, some of the best writing about the capital has come from writers, such as Robert Fontaine, Norman Levine, and Joan Finnigan, who grew up in the city and then moved away.) Other authors associated with Ottawa, like Wilfred Campbell and Elizabeth Smart, seemed more concerned with the depiction of nature or interiority, and thus offer only muted cityscapes in their work."
Part of that, I think, comes from a general lack of push from residents to celebrate the city in the same way that other cities do. It is a romantic and edgy thing to be a Montreal poet, and quite an impressive career feat to be a Toronto poet. On the other hand, Vancouver was where myths were to be created, and then the prairies, where there exists more heaven above than earth. What does Ottawa have? A Victorian lumber town turned Capital, overrun by bureaucrats and bureaucracy, and the rise and fall of high tech. Where does that leave us? A small town grown only in population? A world-class city combined with provincial backwater? Does having too much Capital cause us to see little else, and give the City of Ottawa a (perceived) lack of local identity?
As Vancouver writer Meredith Quartermain says in an interview published on Alterran Poetry Assemblage:
"Further thoughts on place: Is Canada a place? or a word? The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben argues that the Spectacle is language itself, that the very communicability which humans have can operate as an alienating totalitarianism. Human cultures live in words; words are the quintessential places. Agamben also argues that for the first time humans may now experience themselves as linguistic beings; they may stop looking through language at mirages of things beyond and instead recognize the way language empowers some and disempowers others – the way language controls masses of people without their consciousness.
[. . .]
Geography means writing the earth, or you might say writing the world. It seems to me that the act of writing the world is the act of creating it. As such I would hope that this writing keeps rewriting itself, or that writers, as geographers keep rewriting the world-space, and keep approaching it as an act which must unfold in the presence of a plurality of such actors (geographers), so that there is no definitive world or definitive geography, but rather an ongoing discussion or network of stories. I am at the moment deeply engrossed in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, which sets out the ancient Greek notion of a public realm where such a discussion could take place, free of the preoccupations of the marketplace, and free of the necessity of subsistence. She argues that this public realm is now completely filled up with the society of jobholders, leaving no room for world-writing in the way I imagine might be possible as a political discussion. Currently our whole lives are taken up with the two aspects of subsistence and necessity: labour, and consumption, which really are entirely private matters. This is not so because it has to be, but rather because of the forces that have come to dominate our culture. I am indebted to Robin Blaser for leading me to Arendt’s work. Much of what has preoccupied Robin Blaser has been the recovery of such a public world, and of course Hannah Arendt’s work is seminal to his investigations.
As to whether geography can amount to self-definition, I think it’s completely impossible to define oneself in the kind of world-writing in the public realm I’ve described. The whole point of a public interaction between world-writer geographers is a story that must be told by someone else. Who the geographer is unfolds in the interaction. However, that said, I am constantly aware of the geography of language, the contours, rifts, subductions, tectonic plates of the medium in which we exist. A sculpturing of our land-base has already occurred over the millennia of linguistic evolution and we too can erode it, or upheave it, and we can also map it."
I want to build houses in the dusk
of a late century
mud pits smudged with human feet
shapely cusps
sawdust grain cupped in my eyes
soft drywall smooth on beams and posts
prism, window
gather inside
– Julia Williams, MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS
For years I’ve been interested in how various poets across Canada, through individual poems or collections, write their own geography, and increasingly over the past decade or two, writing their cities as opposed to bare country; even writing their suburbs (not just ryan fitzpatrick's Ogden or Jon Paul Fiorentino's Transcona; does anybody remember John McAuley's most brilliant Nothing Ever Happens in Pointe-Claire? (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1977)). To write of any location enters that place into myth, the myth of the city. There is the city, and then there is the dream of the city. And aren't these definitions of self always self-definitions? Where does a book or a writer hold their boundaries? As Monty Reid wrote in his essay "Small Town, Small World" from the anthology Trace: Prairie Writers on Writing (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1986):
"Small towns, with their knowledge that they do not control everything, admit the tensions and thus re-create a place for the subject, perhaps articulate the subject in a new way, rifted by tensions it cannot control but dreaming nonetheless of meanings. Or they may provide a model for the subject as some other social context, marginalized but neither cynical nor indifferent. The subject's place must necessarily be created before the reader can again be engaged, can find a place for identification."
In Vancouver, it includes Daphne Marlatt’s Vancouver Poems (Toronto ON: Ryerson Press, 1972), George Bowering rewriting Rilke’s Duino Elegies into his Kerrisdale Elegies (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1986), or his time at Sir George Williams at the tail end of the 1960s in his collection The Concrete Island: Montreal Poems (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1977), and more recently, Meredith Quartermain’s Vancouver Walking (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005). bpNichol wrote Toronto streets more obviously throughout The Martyrology Book V (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1982); and then there’s Stephen Cain’s Torontology (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2002), Joe Blades’ own song to the St. John River (the river that runs through the city of Fredericton) in the collection River Suite (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 1998), and Leonard Cohen, through almost every collection, who worked his own magic around Montreal streets, cafés and back alleys. Even more recently, Calgary poet Julia Williams, a few months before her collection The Sink House (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2004) published MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2004). In his essay "Mapping Raymond Souster's Toronto" in The Canadian Modernists Meet (Ottawa ON: The University of Ottawa Press, 2005), Stephen Cain writes "That the city is an essential component of literary modernism–as image, as cite, as trope–has long been accepted in modernist studies. As Michel de Certeau most succinctly notes, the city 'is simultaneously the machinery and the hero of modernity.'" He goes on to say:
"For much of the modernist period, this city appears absent from Canadian poetry, and it is not until the rise of postmodernism, post-colonialism, and feminism that sustained and concrete examinations of Toronto and its districts begin to appear: Joe Rosenblatt's Kensington Market, the Annex environs of bpNichol's The Martyrology Book 5, the punk bars and Queen Street watering holes of Lynn Crosbie's "Alphabet City," and the city centre of Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies.
Yet, long before Lee was officially made the poet laureate of Toronto, Raymond Souster was the acknowledged poetic chronicler of Toronto. Indeed, Souster has been represented, in both the popular media and in academic criticism, as the poet of Toronto for much of the twentieth century. While certain other modernist writers have occasionally used Toronto as a subject for their poetry–such as Miriam Waddington, and Dorothy Livesay in her "Queen City" suite–it is only Souster who has consistently returned to Toronto as subject and inspiration for his verse over a lengthy poetic career of nearly half a century. In doing so, Souster has created a significant body of work that explores the site of urban modernism, and an investigation of his work raises questions about aesthetic representations of the city and its functions in the context of Canadian literary modernism."
From modernism to post-modernism, then, as cities are less the machinery that surrounds than a part of the environment itself, that includes the author and whoever else exists in the world. For Winnipeg-born Montreal author Jon Paul Fiorentino, writing the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona as a thread through all of his poetry collections. In a recent issue of dANDelion (Number 2, Volume 29, “the poetic project.” Calgary AB, 2004), Fiorentino writes specifically of the piece “Transcona lol” from Hello Serotonin (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2004):
I officially began my obsession with my hometown of Transcona with the publication of Transcona Fragments (Winnipeg: Cyclops Press, 2002). My Transcona poems are nostalgic and digressive–heavily influenced by Seed Catalogue by Robert Kroetsch and Paterson by William Carlos Williams. Transcona lol uses the idiom of the internet chat room as its primary rhetorical strategy. It fits well into the larger Hello Serotonin project, which is immersed in the language of brain chemistry, pharmaceutical recreation, and geographical mythology. Transcona, a slowly dying railway town, persists in this collection–it is my Paterson.
In the capital, less known but no less important, was William Hawkins’ own Ottawa Poems (Kitchener ON: Weed/Flower Press, 1966), a small chapbook of twenty poems on the city he’s lived in his whole life.
#4
What had she, Queen Victoria, in mind
naming this place, Ottawa, capital?
Ah coolness, he said,
who dug coolness.
This crazy river-abounding town
where people are quietly
following some hesitant
form of evolution
arranged on television
from Toronto.
where girls are all
possible fucks
in the long dull summernights
& Mounties more image
than reality.
– William Hawkins, Ottawa Poems
When I first entered Ottawa at nineteen, a young know-it-all buck wandering Bank Street and filling notebooks with reams of bad poems on city streets, the poems of Michael Dennis, for example, were extremely important to me. Here was a poet just a decade or two ahead of me, writing poems on the same Ottawa streets, giving me a sort of permission to do the same, whether in his wayne gretzky in the house of the sleeping beauties (Toronto ON: Lowlife Publishing, 1987), what we remember and what we forget (Hull QC: The Bobo Press, 1993), or bookstore window project, poems for jessica-flynn (Ottawa ON: Not One Cent of Subsidy Press, 1986). I can still remember the stacks of jessica-flynn that sat on the shelf in the early 1990s, hidden in a corner of the second floor with all the other poetry, in the now-defunct Food for Thought Books on Clarence Street. Only three dollars each; I wanted to purchase the whole lot, and give them to friends.
They say, to understand a place, you have to know its stories. Other authors have taken geographic ownership of their cities, and in Ottawa, the fiction on the city nearly abounds, working from Elizabeth Hay to Elisabeth Harvor to André Alexis' two Ottawa books, the short story collection Despair, and Other Stories of Ottawa (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1994) and Childhood (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 1998), and in Colin McAdam's novel of Ottawa's 1960s in Some Great Thing (Vancouver BC: Raincoast Books, 2004). In poetry, Ottawa for the longest time has only been claimed in the most subtle ways, existing more in occasional pieces by writers such as John Newlove, Judith Fitzgerald, John Barton and Eli Mandel. I wonder in part if this is because of the supposed transient nature of the City of Ottawa; how many writers can even claim Ottawa as home and birthplace? William Hawkins and Blaine Marchand were born here, but only Hawkins has produced a book lately, his first collection in thirty-one years (spending his days as a Blue Line cab driver since the early 1970s), the collection Dancing Alone: Selected Poems 1960-1990 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press / cauldron books, 2005). Other writers, such as Norman Levine, Elizabeth Smart, Nick Power, Gail Scott and Margaret Atwood were born and sometimes raised in the Capital, but more often than not left as soon as it was possible. I was born here, but almost immediately left (put up for adoption through Cornwall Children's Aid), and didn’t “return” until I had completed high school as yet another sheer accident of geography; but one grade thirteen credit short of getting into Concordia University in Montreal, I sat three hours in Henry Beissel's office, watching his frustration on the phone, as the administration repeated to him how they couldn't let me in the school to participate in the Creative Writing program. Where else but go to Ottawa; with the more open-door policy of Carleton University (I lasted three weeks), moving two hours west to follow a girl. There was no consideration of returning home. It could easily have been so very different.
John Newlove (d. 2003), Colin Morton, John Barton (who left for Victoria, British Columbia in 2004), Anita Dolman and Nadine McInnis all came from the prairies; Michael Dennis and Dennis Tourbin from London and Port Dalhousie, respectively (both by way of Peterborough); Stephen Brockwell came from Montreal; David O'Meara and his friend Ken Babstock grew up in Pembroke, just up the Ottawa Valley; Anita Lahey and Wanda O'Connor hail from the east coast. Is anyone else actually from here?
How different is this from, say, Montreal or Toronto? Read the biographies of the contributors to the annual Headlight Anthology published by the creative writing department at Concordia University, and see the range of the authors' points-of-origin. Is it simply easier to be absorbed into the dynamic of Montreal than it is in Ottawa?
IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA
The streets are full of overweight corporals,
of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia
of a capital city, struggling through the snow.
There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument
is stroking it incisively, the machine
in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.
It is not illegal to be unhappy.
A shadowy technician says alternately,
Breathe, and, You may stop now.
It is not illegal to be unhappy.
– John Newlove, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL and other poems (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 1999)
When I was contemplating my own collection of Ottawa pieces, I considered the anniversaries, including the 150th anniversary of the City of Ottawa in 2005, and the 150th anniversary of Queen Victoria naming us capital city to the Dominion of Canada coming up in 2007. It seemed the most obvious time to push anything Ottawa-related. As much as I consider myself a resident of Glengarry County, where I have not lived since 1989 and might never live again (until I perhaps retire), my personal geography feels split in two, as this the city where I was not only born, but where my adopted mother grew (the first of her family hospital born, in the same building I arrived, nearly thirty years later), and where I have remained since I left home, and feel no need to leave; the city my daughter helps keep me to.
The uncompleted manuscript of The Ottawa City Project works to write various thematic sections in different styles; I wanted the name to reflect the more conservative, even bureaucratic aspects of the city, and the myth of the city, while at the same time working the manuscript as a whole through sections that go completely against it. One section has already appeared as an issue of the long poem journal STANZAS, the 39-part piece "ottawa poems (blue notes)" (2005), and fragments of another section, "shipbuilding," to focus more on the Ottawa River, have started appearing in scattered journals.
shipbuilding (foundation
you were writing a paper on marriage
& wherein lies the question
, a question of lies
i was working on a poem
on the ottawa river
how you cant step into
the same truth twice
arriving too early for dinner, i read
an essay on homemade beer
by paul quarrington
you couldnt work with me in the room
i tried not to laugh out loud
at the essay, not at you,
half a glass of merlot
i could tell that you
were not impressed
i pictured a lemon, the shape
of an hour
– The Ottawa City Project, "shipbuilding"
My goal with The Ottawa City Project is to reference different aspects of the city, not to attempt to represent the city as a whole. I might live in the city, but I can only be aware of a part; as much living as observing, and both are finite, after all. Compared to me, the city seems infinite, large and almost unknowable in any way but in parts. I am the city, of the city. I have still never stood at the corner of Baseline and Merivale (nor do I feel the need to). Call me, if you need to, a Centretown boy.
Not that the city has never been written of: a number of the Confederation Poets of the late 1800s and early 1900s lived and worked in the city for various government departments, and it held like a bad joke that, if you hadn’t written a poem on the Chaudiere Falls or Rapids, you weren’t really an Ottawa poet. One of the strongholds of poetry in the late 19th century, Ottawa modernism held strong and overstayed its welcome, writing too far into twentieth century. Some of the most interesting poems about the city over the past few decades have been written by non-residents, including Eli Mandel, Judith Fitzgerald and a breathtaking array of Ottawa poems by former resident George Elliott Clarke included in his collection Black (Vancouver BC: Polestar Press, 2006; poems that also appeared in the first issue of the online ottawater), a follow-up to his collection Blue (Vancouver BC: Polestar Press, 2001). John Bell even edited a whole collection of pieces about the City of Ottawa, from both locals and outsiders, the collection Ottawa, A Literary Portrait (Pottersfield NS: Pottersfield Press, 1992), published as a follow-up to a similar book he edited on Halifax (Pottersfield NS: Pottersfield Press, 1990), that included the work of such writers as Norman Levine, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan and Milton Acorn. As Bell wrote in his introduction:
"Not all the writers – be they short- or long term residents – who have played a role in the literary history of Ottawa have chosen to portray the city in their work. Some, like Robert Stead, George Elliott Clarke, and Benjamin Sulte – and the many other Western, Maritime, and Quebec writers identified with the capital over the years – were, in a sense, expatriates who often found that distance compelled them to write primarily about the communities they had left behind. (Similarly, some of the best writing about the capital has come from writers, such as Robert Fontaine, Norman Levine, and Joan Finnigan, who grew up in the city and then moved away.) Other authors associated with Ottawa, like Wilfred Campbell and Elizabeth Smart, seemed more concerned with the depiction of nature or interiority, and thus offer only muted cityscapes in their work."
Part of that, I think, comes from a general lack of push from residents to celebrate the city in the same way that other cities do. It is a romantic and edgy thing to be a Montreal poet, and quite an impressive career feat to be a Toronto poet. On the other hand, Vancouver was where myths were to be created, and then the prairies, where there exists more heaven above than earth. What does Ottawa have? A Victorian lumber town turned Capital, overrun by bureaucrats and bureaucracy, and the rise and fall of high tech. Where does that leave us? A small town grown only in population? A world-class city combined with provincial backwater? Does having too much Capital cause us to see little else, and give the City of Ottawa a (perceived) lack of local identity?
As Vancouver writer Meredith Quartermain says in an interview published on Alterran Poetry Assemblage:
"Further thoughts on place: Is Canada a place? or a word? The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben argues that the Spectacle is language itself, that the very communicability which humans have can operate as an alienating totalitarianism. Human cultures live in words; words are the quintessential places. Agamben also argues that for the first time humans may now experience themselves as linguistic beings; they may stop looking through language at mirages of things beyond and instead recognize the way language empowers some and disempowers others – the way language controls masses of people without their consciousness.
[. . .]
Geography means writing the earth, or you might say writing the world. It seems to me that the act of writing the world is the act of creating it. As such I would hope that this writing keeps rewriting itself, or that writers, as geographers keep rewriting the world-space, and keep approaching it as an act which must unfold in the presence of a plurality of such actors (geographers), so that there is no definitive world or definitive geography, but rather an ongoing discussion or network of stories. I am at the moment deeply engrossed in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, which sets out the ancient Greek notion of a public realm where such a discussion could take place, free of the preoccupations of the marketplace, and free of the necessity of subsistence. She argues that this public realm is now completely filled up with the society of jobholders, leaving no room for world-writing in the way I imagine might be possible as a political discussion. Currently our whole lives are taken up with the two aspects of subsistence and necessity: labour, and consumption, which really are entirely private matters. This is not so because it has to be, but rather because of the forces that have come to dominate our culture. I am indebted to Robin Blaser for leading me to Arendt’s work. Much of what has preoccupied Robin Blaser has been the recovery of such a public world, and of course Hannah Arendt’s work is seminal to his investigations.
As to whether geography can amount to self-definition, I think it’s completely impossible to define oneself in the kind of world-writing in the public realm I’ve described. The whole point of a public interaction between world-writer geographers is a story that must be told by someone else. Who the geographer is unfolds in the interaction. However, that said, I am constantly aware of the geography of language, the contours, rifts, subductions, tectonic plates of the medium in which we exist. A sculpturing of our land-base has already occurred over the millennia of linguistic evolution and we too can erode it, or upheave it, and we can also map it."
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