Poetry: What's it Good For? Reflections on Vancouver Writers' Festival Event

On Friday I was able to go to an event at the Vancouver Writers' Festival after my BC English Teachers' Association conference. It was called "Poetry: What's it Good For?" and was hosted by Aislinn Hunter. The poets on the panel were British writer David Constantine, American poet and essayist Tony Hoagland and Canadian poetry star Karen Solie.

I was familiar with Hoagland's essays and Solie's poetry, but had never heard any of them read before and I was excited. So were other poets in the audience.

We are familiar with the question and song: War, what is it good for? But poetry is not evil like war. Is it possible that it can be benign yet good for absolutely nothing? Not according to these wise and award winning writers.

Here are some of the notes I took while listening, in the order they were spoken:

• autonomy is the fundamental law of poetry.

• the Romantic ideal of truth and beauty is in radical opposition to capitalism and politician's mendacity. (Constantine)

• poetry is an act of revolt.

• poetry exists in the plurality of the world, in opposition to fundamentalism.

• poetry can be reckless: to make a metaphor can be freeing. (Hoagland)

• poetry has an intimate capacity to instigate empathy; (Solie)

• a poem is an event in the mind of the reader. (Solie)

• poetry has a responsibility of witness, expressing anger, and can be confrontational; it can show a "realization of my own complicity in systems I deplore and make me feel uncomfortable." (Solie)

• a poem exerts the power of imagination to push back the walls of self and make the space we live in more free; it enlarges our consciousness. (Hoagland)

• irony is not redemptive.

• the British tradition, from Chaucer to Elizabethans, skipping the 18th Century, then from the Romantics on of plain speaking in the real language of men, dealing with subjects from the real world. (Constantine)

• There needs to be something at stake. More than recognizing a place, feeling, or event. (Solie)

• What's at stake is are you busy living or busy dying? (soul, authenticity) (Hoagland)

• Poetry is about paying attention. The discussion ended with Rilke: you must change your life; (Constantine) and vertical time. (Hoagland) Poetry  slows us down and we are thirsty for that.

Karen Solie began the reading portion by reciting "Bitumen," which Hunter told us we could find here:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/250306

Maybe it is from living under a Harper government for so many years, with dwindling Canada Council funds and a focus away from Canadian culture, but lately I have wondered if I will write poetry in the future, or switch to prose. Does poetry matter to anyone or do people only want stories? Solie's point about something needing to be at stake got me thinking about whether perhaps poetry is the best genre for writing about what's at stake for me, after all. We have thrown out Harper, and funding for the arts is coming. Still, there is a lot of room still to be made inside the 'walls of ourselves'. If poetry is a revolt against capitalism and hypocrisy, which have so infiltrated our lives, then maybe poetry is good for creating autonomy and bearing witness now as much as ever.

Geist!

What an honour to have my poem "Walking in Snow" published in Geist!  Still waiting to hear the date of my book launch this spring.

What I did on Spring Break

While much of the province enjoys another week of break, I am back at work.  Last year, I treated myself to an at home writing retreat and made progress on my second book, which will be published by Oolichan in 2015.

This year, on the first Saturday of the break, my 101 year old grandmother died.

Roberta McKibbin (n. Poole) December 6, 1912-March 15, 2014

My grandmother was a painter who studied with members of the Group of Seven before they were so named, and in her later years, branched into other media.  She was the one who kept encouraging me to take up my art, even when I was overwhelmed with babies. Thanks, Grandma. At least three poems in my next book are about her.

Later in the week, I made my first visit to the 821 section of the Vancouver Public Library, which was a real thrill.  I was shocked to see my own book there, but I guess I shouldn't have been, seeing that I had a launch for that book at the library.

I was only able to take out a few of the thousand poetry books. Here is my quick grab:

I have read my all-time favourite poets first: Deborah Digges and Carol Ann Duffy. Digges' Trapeze was exactly what I needed after my grandmother died, with her poems of grief. I love the way the ideas seem to jump with the line breaks. I love the title poem and "Telling the Bees", which I am sure I have read somewhere before. These poems are both heartbreaking and subtle.  Feminine Gospels helped me, too, especially the first poem, "The Long Queen" which seemed to me to be partly about a down to earth deity and partly about my grandmother. Everyone knows poems become especially poignant in times of trouble, and I found them so this week.

While I as revising one of the poems in my manuscript, and thinking about the order of poems, I came upon a title, "Maps," which my publisher has agreed to be the working title from now on. Now I think it perhaps also came from all the maps of Whistler Mountain I studied when I took my daughter skiing last week. As this was my first time skiing on the mountain in about 25 years, I was careful to study it so I would remain on green runs!

I'm glad I have two and a half more weeks with my library books!  I hope you are reading poetry you love, too.

Big Win!

I am so honoured to have won the Vancouver Writer's Festival Poetry Contest for 2013 for my poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Garter Snakes." I wrote this poem, of course, after Wallace Stevens famous poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." And a few weeks ago, in Sechelt, I got to hear judge Evelyn Lau read her poetry in the Arts Centre and to meet her for the first time after the reading. How exciting! I am very pleased that my new book, out next year, will be with her publisher, Oolichan Books.

Garter Snake

I am looking forward to Spring Break in a few days when I will have time to focus on my writing once again.