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.