I don’t usually pay much attention to these officially declared months, even if I do love poetry. (And women’s history and black history and baked beans — you didn’t know? July is National Baked Bean Month. July! Despite the fact that baked beans are clearly a winter food. Clearly. I mean, duh.) But this post by poet David McGimpsey makes National Poetry Month feel worth celebrating.
Happy Month. Go read some poems. While there’s still time.
I recently had the pleasure of reading a delicious crop of new poetry books for the Montreal Review of Books. You can read my reviews in their Spring issue on their flashy new website and blog!
To mark the centenary of the great Canadian poet Irving Layton, I thought I’d share one my favorites of his poems. Layton’s best work is bombastic, and this poem is what I like to call “a diatribe.” They’re lots of fun to write and almost as much fun to read.
LETTER TO A LIBRARIAN
Mr. P – I have heard it rumoured
That you, humanist, librarian with a licence,
In the shady privacy of your glassed room
Tore up my book of poems.
Sir, a word in your ear. Others
Have tried that game: burned Mann
And my immortal kinsman Heine.
Idiots! What act could be vainer?
For this act of yours, the ligatures
Pest-corroded, your eyes shall fall
From their sockets, drop on your lacquered desk
With the dull weight of pinballs.
And brighter than the sapless vine
Your hands shall flare
To the murkiest kimbos of the library,
Flashing my name like a neon sign.
And the candid great
Of whom not one was ever an Australian
Cry dustily from their shelves,
“Impostor! False custodian!”
Till a stunned derelict
You fall down blind, ear-beleagured,
While Rabelais pipes you to a wished-for death
On a kazoo quaint and silvered.
-Irving Layton
(from, “Selected Poems 1945-89: A Wild Peculiar Joy,” McClelland & Stewart, 1982.)
Versefest, Ottawa’s own poetry festival, is right around the corner, making me feel very fortunate to be a newly-minted Ottawan. Not only that, but this year I have the special honour of contributing some of my own work to the festivities. I’m looking forward to warming up the audience for two of Canadian poetry’s most distinctive voices, Roo Borson and Fred Wah. Don’t miss it!
Reading by Roo Borson & Fred Wah
Thursday, March 1, 7pm
Artscourt – 2 Daly Avenue, Ottawa
I’m so excited to be the featured poet at this month’s Voices of Venus reading in Ottawa. Warm up with us on February 8th at Venus Envy sex shop and bookstore with an evening of poetry! The event begins with an open mike, so be sure to bring your own poems!
Something about seeing Ottawa blanketed in snow has helped me to feel more at home here. I’m also excited to be doing my first poetry reading in my new hometown, courtesy of local poetry outfit, Bywords. I was excited to have my poem, Confessional, featured on their site in December, and I’m now looking forward to having other work included in the upcoming issue of the Bywords Quarterly Journal.
To launch the issue, Bywords is hosting its ninth annual fundraiser for Cornerstone Women’s Shelter, where I’ll read with Jamie Bradley and Luminita Suse. Please brave the beautiful snow to listen to some poetry and support a great cause!
Bywords Warms the Night XIV: A Benefit for Cornerstone
Sunday, January 15, 2012 – 2:00pm
Collected Works Bookstore
1242 Wellington Street West, Ottawa
More information here.
McGill-Queen’s University Press recently released Failure’s Opposite, a collection of essays on the work of Canadian poet A.M. Klein, edited by Sherry Simon and Norman Ravvin. Klein was ahead of his time, using his mixed Jewish/francophone/anglophone background to develop a hybrid poetic language that Quebec English-language poets are just beginning to pay tribute to today. I’m excited to get my hands on a copy. Klein opened a creative door for me when I immigrated to Quebec a few years ago. His poems invited me to develop my own sense of identity in Montreal’s diverse linguistic landscape. I look forward to reading more about him and his work.
I’m also excited to be included in a chapbook compiled in conjunction with the book’s release. Poet Jason Camlot invited rewritings of Klein’s iconic poem The Mountain and collected the resulting work into a handsome little volume called, “After The Mountain: The A.M. Klein Poetry Reboot Project”. I was so delighted that my poem was selected, and since only 125 versions of the chapbook were created, I thought I’d share it here:
MAKING MOUNTAINS
The collision of tectonic plates
folds the Earth upon itself.
Blocks of rock slide along
and, lifted or tilted, pile up.
Magma pours over the Earth’s surface
then cools and hardens, or rises
from its mantle and lifts the overlying
layers of dirt to make a dome.
An uplifted plateau erodes.
The Earth’s crust erupts into a meadow,
a pebbly brook, buttercups. The bronze
tits of Justice.
The easy threes of trilliums thread dark
green, green, and white through the Earth,
beside bloodroots — Chokecherry black!
Terror, holiday!
To make a mountain bleed cross light
over streetcars, pissabed dandelions,
coolie acorns, green prickly husks of chestnuts
and, beneath a mat of grass, root
all the Os and amber afternoons.
Find a single sentimental bench, soften
the brass of a band with dark and distant
mood. Tell the loved girl
you love her. In the layers of a mountain
make a man a kind of history.
By Abby Paige
From “After The Mountain: The A.M. Klein Poetry Reboot Project Anthology”, Jason Camlot, Ed., Synapse Chapbook Series, 2011.
The solitary part of writing and freelancing isn’t something that normally bothers me. I enjoy the quiet of my work space and the independence of my routine. But every once in a while something happens to remind me of how much of my work takes place in my head and how important it is to find ways to share the work — not just through publications, readings, or performances, but through simple conversation.
I was deeply honoured earlier this summer when my poem, “The Undefended Border,” was chosen by RHINO Poetry Forum to receive their 2011 Founder’s Prize. A bit of recognition is useful fuel for my solitary work. But I was equally honoured and grateful to be interviewed by associate editor Virginia Bell for RHINO’s blog. Her insightful questions gave me the opportunity to articulate some important ideas about the poem and about my poetry, as well as the opportunity to share those ideas with you. Thanks, Virginia, for interrupting the solitude.
Poetry doesn’t have to tell a story, but I must admit, I like it better when it does. It doesn’t have to be a linear story; the story doesn’t need to have characters or an ending. But I always enjoy a poetry collection more if I feel that the poems are somehow knitted together.
Gabe Foreman’s “A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People” seemed likely to be held together by a thread. I look for it in my review, up on Rover now.
When I first moved to Canada, I went on a crusade to introduce myself to as much contemporary Canadian poetry as possible. Considering that I have spent the vast majority of my life less than an hour from the US/Canada border, I was a bit chagrined to realize how few Canadian writers I had ever read, and I went about remedying the problem with the kind of dedication that I think only an immigrant would be capable of. Isn’t the convert always more dogmatic than those born into the faith?
Ken Babstock’s Airstream Land Yacht was among the books that made an early impression. The poems had a strange ability to make a kind of meaning that you could only really see out of the corner of your eye; sort of like Ashbery, but less stream-of-consciousness and decidedly more Canadian. In his new (fourth) collection, Methodist Hatchet, Babstock goes deeper. The poems have less humour than I remember and greater obscurity. Are these the signs of a poet maturing into a master, or of poetry retreating further from the average reader? I dunno. My full review is up on Rover now.
