Poet Laureate

A Bouquet of Spring Flowers

This week we are showcasing 5 poetic musings by Derek French, a former member of the Collingwood Writer’s Collective who is currently in lockdown in a Toronto retirement home. Derek is the author of Spirit, a memoir of WW2 and is now working on his next book Evening Shadows. These musings on the theme of springtime are from that manuscript; he shares them with us as an antidote for tough times. Here is an introduction in his own words:

Every year, as the winter slowly begins to relax its icy grip on the natural world, I am reminded of Robert Browning’s nostalgic poem Home Thoughts From Abroad. For a half century I have lived in Canada and loved this country, but as an ex-Brit, it is difficult to resist the siren call of Browning’s opening line: “Oh to be in England now that April’s there.” 

May 11:
I suffer from acute home sickness every spring. Those who have shared the experience of spring in England must surely relate to my nostalgia for those brave flowers and plants that herald the change of season there. One after another, each species‒as if on cue‒ satiates the eyes and nose with its performance on the stage of this seasonal theatre. Act One, Scene One can start as early as January. In a sheltered, south-facing exposure, you can start looking for the delicate snowdrops, well named as they are capable of pushing through a blanket of snow. If you pick one to tantalize your nose, do so with care as the heavy head is delicately suspended on a slender stem. These gently scented heralds of spring announce the new season as they bloom in the cold winds of the first month of the year, a symbol that better times are coming.

May 12:
Waiting in the wings is the crocus. Named after Krokus, a Greek god, this hardy flower is the next to appear. Apart from its beauty, the crocus it is the source of saffron. The expensive seasoning and colouring agent is made from the stigma and styles in the centre of the crocus flower. Fields of crocus are grown in Spain and other Mediterranean countries where the pollen from each plant is carefully harvested by hand, accounting for the high cost of saffron.
 
May 13: 
Violets can be found on well-established grassy banks where the turf has remained unturned for many years. They love a south facing location where the sun can bring out the sweet perfume of their violet, white or yellow flowers. Wild violets are demure, grandmotherly, old-fashioned and friendly. Dainty, these little flowers are difficult to hold together as a bunch. Maybe only children with their smaller, 
nimble fingers should pick violets, placing their modest display of purple and white flowers in an eggcup-sized container to whisper “over here” on a mantlepiece or side table.  

May 14:
The little yellow primrose has the most significant history of all the English spring flowers. If you take a close look at the symbol of the Royal House of York, you will notice that the design of the family crest resembles the open face of the humble wild primrose. The primrose may have royal connections, but it is found in humble places. It thrives in woodland glades where the sunlight filters through the trees and on roadside banks where it struggles up through the uncut grass. In the month of May, I recall narrow lanes hemmed in by high banks in Devon, where the little yellow flowers have cast a carpet of colour and fragrance against the fresh green of the new spring grass. 

May 15: 
Ah, the Bluebell, nature’s carpet flower. While Primroses grow in small clusters, the Bluebell loves a crowd. Imagine spectators in a large sports stadium doing The Wave and you will understand the effect produced by a gust of wind blowing across a sea of these blue flowers in a woodland setting. The Bluebell likes to make a statement as one among many. When picked as a single stem it is a shy creature and will droop within minutes due to its tall hollow stem. Bluebells should be left alone in the wild as a wonderful blue carpet under the trees. Much like a wild bird that sings so beautifully in its woodland habitat, it is too much to ask of it to do the same in captivity. 

May 15:

Yes, early spring in most of Canada is a big disappointment, too often carrying the leftovers of winter. The frost in the ground lingers too long and the detritus of winter remains swept by the wind into the messy corners of last year’s natural world. But by May I can pronounce that spring has finally arrived and with it, Canada’s signature blooms.

The magnificent Trillium puts on a great show in May in Ontario and the temperate regions of North America. As its name implies, it has a flower head consisting of three petals, often white although some varieties are yellow, pink and even purple. It’s known as the Wake Robin flower, perhaps because it blooms when the robin returns to northern areas after over-wintering in southern climes. Like the Bluebell, the Trillium prefers shady woodlands where it loves to live in a crowd of its own species. It does not survive being picked and should be admired in situ where it puts on a fine show against the dark green of its foliage in the shadows of a tree canopy.

The demure little Scylla stubbornly pushes up its blue flower each spring. Given time and the right conditions, it too will form a blue carpet before discreetly sinking back to take a subservient role, having been shouldered aside by the stronger grass plants in lawns and wild grasslands.

Let’s not ignore that foe of the urban park keeper and the suburban gardener: the Dandelion. For those brief four or five days when its large yellow flowers bloom, the Dandelion puts on a great show of turning lawns from green to yellow. For those brief days, this under-appreciated tough guy in the turf, deservedly draws comments of acceptance. The origin of the name ‘Dandelion’ is its serrated leaves resemble a lion’s teeth or “dent de lion.” I prefer my version of the name as I envision that bright yellow flower as a shaggy mane around a male lion’s head.

Another villain in the landscaper’s vocabulary is the Buttercup and its relation, the Celandine. These yellow harbingers of spring are lower on the scale of bad guys than the Dandelion. After all, any flower that children and lovers hold under their partner’s chin to see if they love butter cannot be all bad.
 

May 25: In Memorium by Day Merrill
May 26:  a john lennon Dream by mark john junior
May 27: Delay by Elizabeth Jennings
May 28: Shapechangers in Winter by Margaret Atwood
May 29: Sheltered in Place by Richard Levine

May 25: In the US, Memorial Day a federal holiday celebrated on the last Monday in May to honour and mourn the military personnel who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Today’s poem remembers all those lost to date in the ongoing war against Covid-19.

In Memorium

The United States of America excels at many things, one of them being war. 
At which we have much practice. 
Every May, we celebrate our war dead by 
going to the beach and drinking too much beer (this Bud’s for you!)

The US won its freedom with only 50,00 casualties 
over the 8 years of the Revolutionary War. 
We upped those stats by another 20,00 dead 
(plus an incinerated White House)
in the War of 1812 and added 
another 17,000+ in the Mexican-American War.

It took a Civil War to really ramp the numbers up. 
That North-South game was a game changer!
The U.S. Army (which won) amassed causalities of 364,511
to the losing Confederate Army’s ~255,000 
(to the victor goes the precision?) 

A bunch of Indian wars added another few thousand, 
relatively paltry (for the US government forces as least). 
The Gay 90’s came to an end with two foreign wars: 
Spanish-American (2,446) and Philippine-America (,4196)
We do get around!

Skipping over a bunch of interventions, let’s zero in on 
the Great War, the War to End of All Wars, 
aka World War I (oops) 
which produced a respectable 116,516.
We racked up more impressive numbers a mere 2+ decades later, 
when World War II gave us (took away) 405,399.

Korea was a flop with only 36,516 over 3 years 
(and no official “end”)
but we made up for it with the Vietnam Conflict, 
the non-war that pumped out 
58,209 dead (with 1,597 still listed as MIA)

So roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers 
have died in the nation's wars, 
most very roughly. 

Our latest battle is against an unseen foe, 
the two-horned best of Covid-19 and rapacious capitalism, 
both of which look poised to own the board. 
1.69M cases in less than a handful of months.
Deaths hovering just under 100,000. 

The current resident of the White House was asked 
to lower flags to half-mast to honour those lives, but
more pleasant to pull out golf than compassion,
and celebrate the Glorious War Dead by
firing up all burners on the barbeque, 
the closest to a 21-gun salute that 
pandemic victims are likely to get.

Happy Memorial Day!

-    Day Merrill 

May 26: On May 26, 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their famous “bed-in” at Montréal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel, inviting guests, reporters, photographers and a documentary film crew to their hotel suites to witness them recording “Give Peace a Chance” (the phrase repeated no less than 20 times!). Even more well known is “Imagine," the best-selling single of Lennon’s solo career Released as a single in the US in 1971, it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and later topped the charts following Lennon's murder in 1980. Over 200 artists have performed or covered the song, including Gal Gadot, who posted an informal, star-studded cover of "Imagine" on Instagram in March 2020 in response to the unfolding coronavirus crisis. Today poem form blogger mark john junior is a tribute to John Lennon, and indirectly to Yoko Ono, who was credited in 2017 as co-creator of “Imagine.”

a john lennon dream

grew up dreaming a john lennon dream
about peace and love happiness and hope
bout all the beautiful things that could be
if we could just agree to love one another
grew up believing that we could build a heaven right 
here on earth if we could all just believe
that everything is possible with just a little bit of love
but as the years have passed by
as the song he imagined keeps playing
as we have all grown older
we realize that we dreamt a john lennon dream
and all the beautiful dreams like it
they are fragile dreams only a heart like his could put to song
but i think to myself
perhaps if we could all still try
perhaps if we could not just give up
maybe we could change the world just a little bit
maybe we could find john lennon's dream
here on earth
find the peace love happiness and hope
if we could believe like we used to
our own hearts could dream like john lennon
that our love expressed together as one
could change the world just a little bit
then just a little more
just a little more
what a beautiful world that dreamin' could build
if you could join us dreamin' a john lennon dream

-    mark john junior, blogosphere

May 27: On May 27, 1999 Canadian astronaut Julie Payette took off aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery for the International Space Station (ISS). The second Canadian woman to fly in and the first to work in the space laboratory, helped with its construction and subsequently in operating three specialized robotic arms. The link between space and poetry was noted by William Wordsworth, who proclaimed “Poetry … is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.” In 1976, Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s discovery of pulsars forever changed our understanding of the universe. She recounts that despite a good education, an appreciation of poetry came later in life; after a lecture on how long it takes light to travel various distances, a friend gave her a copy of Elizabeth Jennings’s poem “Delay.” 40 years after her initial discovery, she explored the intersection of poetry and science as editor of the anthology Dark Matter: Poems of Space. 

Delay
The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
 Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
 And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star’s impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.
-    Elizabeth Jennings, UK

May 28: The Dionne Quintuplets were born in northern Ontario on May 28, 1934. Their parents already had five children when the girls arrived and went on to have three more after “The Quints.” At four months old, Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie were declared Wards of the King, and spent the next nine years in the “care” of the state, living in “a veritable baby zoo” where the girls would play twice a day with an observation hallway curved around to accommodate thousands of daily spectators. By 1937, “Quintland” was a more popular tourist destination than Niagara Falls and their fame was cemented by dolls, magazine photo shoots and appearances in ads for dozens of products. The bizarre nature of their life is imagained in How the Light Gets In, a novel loosely based on their lives by Canadian crime fiction writer Louise Penny. Penny uses poetry liberally throughout her Inspector Gamache series, much of it by Canadian icon Margaret Atwood. Today’s poem, Section 3 of “Shape Changers in Winter” reminds me of the dual nature of the Quints, each of whom possessed both an individual and collective identity. 

Shapechangers in Winter 3.

This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold
and unlocking, where the past
lets go of and becomes the future;
the place of caught breath, the door
of a vanished house left ajar.
Taking hands like children
lost in a six-dimensional
forest, we step across.
The walls of the house fold themselves down,
and the house turns
itself inside out, as a tulip does
in its last full-blown moment, and our candle
flares up and goes out, and the only common
sense that remains to us is touch,
as it will be, later, some other
century, when we will seem to each other
even less what we were.
But that trick is just to hold on
through all appearances; and so we do,
and yes, I know it’s you;
and that is what we will come to, sooner
or later, when it’s even darker
than It is now, when the snow is colder,
when it’s darkest and coldest
and candles are no longer any use to us
and the visibility is zero: Yes.
It’s still you. It’s still you.

-    Margaret Atwood, Toronto

May 29: Retired New York City teacher, activist and poet Richard Levine is the author of 2 poetry collections as well five chapbooks. He penned this deceptively simple poem about the lessons that can and must be gleaned from this time we are living through.

Thank you for joining us this month as we shared a wide variety of May Flowers. On May 28, we ‘re hosting a Zoom writing workshop called the ABCs of Poetry to encourage new poets. Throughout the summer, we’ll be posting “prompts” you can use to try out a number of poetic genres/forms. As we’ll be publishing submissions every week, we look forward to seeing your work! 

Sheltered in Place 

You watch your boy struggle with giving
up the turtle, returning it to the pond
where he’d found it on a walk—
first time you’d all been out in days.

How thoughtful he thought he’d been,
making it a home in the home
where the family sheltered in place.
How he cared for his armored friend.

Having picked flowers, knowing they’d die,
you understand the urge to pluck
the exotic, the beautiful—any diversion
from fear, which is in itself a disease.

That morning, you helped your boy
give up the idea of living forever.    

-    Richard Levine, Brooklyn, NY     

Click on the title below to go to the full poem.

April 11: In Impossible Darkness by Kim Rosen
April 12: It's Complicated by Day Merrill
April 13: Zoom by Jake McArthur, Collingwood
April 14: In Troubled Times by Antoinette Voûte Roeder
April 15: To Live Without Guilt by Robin Merrill Shaw, Collingwood
April 16: Renewal by Debra Currie
April 17: Unnatural Causes by Lillian Allen
April 18: We Could Have Been Canada by Day Merrill
April 19: Deep Deep Down There's a Ray of Sunshine by Patrick Keating
April 20: Love’s Message by Andrea Mathieson

April 11: In Impossible Darkness by Kim Rosen

In this poem, Kim Rosen‒US poet, poetry advocate and author of Saved by a Poem‒The Transformative Power of Words, describes the process by which a caterpillar is transmogrified into a butterfly, analogous to what Christians believe happened to Jesus on Holy Saturday‒ the time between his death by crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection in a “new” body on Easter Sunday. 

In Impossible Darkness

Do you know how
the caterpillar
turns?
Do you remember
what happens
inside a cocoon?
You liquefy.
There in the thick black
of your self-spun womb,
void as the moon before waxing,
you melt
(as Christ did
for three days
in the tomb)
conceiving
in impossible darkness
the sheer
inevitability
of wings.
-    Kim Rosen, US Poet/Poetry Advocate 

April 12: It's Complicated by Day Merrill

In addition to Easter Sunday, April 12, also marks the introduction of the repressive Indian Act in 1876 and the commencement of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope in 1980. I wrote this poem to explore the complicate emotions that a single day can evoke, depending on your perspective. I wonder how this date in 2020 will be remembered? Here’s a link to a hopeful yet measured message from Queen Elizabeth by way of our Governor General, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette.

It’s Complicated

Unlike fixed holidays,
Easter wanders around,
tied as it is to the celebration of Eostre‒
Pagan Goddess of Fertility (hence the Easter Eggs)
and closely aligned with Venus‒ the Roman Goddess of Love
for whom the hare was sacred (hence the Easter Bunny)
But I digress.
Celebrated on 
the first Sunday
after the full moon
after the Spring Equinox,
Easter can fall anytime between March 22 and April 25.
This year, it falls on April 12th, a day with several resonances for Canadians:
On the one hand, it’s Easter! 
What’s not to love about the #1 chocolate holiday of the year? 
Not to mention those squishy marshmallow chicks in improbable colours.
On a more sombre note, 
the Indian Act was introduced on April 12, 1876. 
Aimed at eradicating First Nations culture in favour of 
assimilation into Euro-Canadian society, 
it crucified millennia of traditions on the altar of colonial superiority, 
not to be resurrected until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2008.
A middle ground that encompasses willing sacrifice and worthy celebration 
can be found in Terry Fox, who began his Marathon of Hope on 
April 12, 1980 in St. John's, Newfoundland. 
While his run ended on September 1st in Thunder Bay 
after cancer was discovered in his lungs, 
the marathon raised over $10,000,000 for cancer research 
and Terry remain a hero and inspiration to this day.

Hope amidst possible, even probable defeat. Not a bad lesson.

-    Day Merrill

April 13: Zoom by Jake McArthur

Before the pandemic, few us had ever heard of‒much utilized‒ the online communications platform Zoom. Despite some recent high-profile issues, Zoom remains a great way to connect with one another “face to face” during these housebound times. It’s especially useful for groups, as Jake points out in his poem extolling all the ways he has “Zoomed” so far. Like Jake, I am a high touch v. a high-tech person but Zoom as been a real boon for me as well. As I like to remind myself, “Never let what you can’t do get in the way of what you can.” 

Zoom

Social distancing and isolation —
obstacles to connection — have
catapulted internet conversations
in lieu of face-to-face gatherings
and it ain’t half bad.
Faces and partial bodies 
laid out in squares on the screen —
Roz quips —
“Looks like Hollywood Squares” —
There’s a sense of equity — 
equal face time
equal voice time [for the taking]
equal size of physical presence
picture quality similar
lighting quality optional —
intimacy of looking into
personal spaces.

This is new for many so
conversation doesn’t yet flow
as smoothly as it will come to.
Economically efficient
message distribution effective.

In the past 24 hours
I’ve participated online in
a rehearsal for a play
a family birthday celebration
a celebrants gathering re: 
online funeral options
a conference call on hardiness
    in the time of Covid-19.
and tomorrow I facilitate a meeting
and rehearse again.

This technology
will play a major role
in shaping the new normal arising 
out of this pandemic — 
and that ain’t half bad.
-    Jake McArthur, Collingwood

April 14: In Troubled Times by Antoinette Voûte Roeder

Antoinette Voûte Roeder is a published writer and poet who says that music was her first language, followed by poetry. She is a Spiritual Director with Jubilee, a Canadian organization that offers programs rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition that are ecumenical, interfaith, embodied and justice oriented. Welcoming Spirit wherever she finds her, Antoinette accompanies those seeking depth and meaning in their lives using a variety of tools including the Enneagram, dream work, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality instrument. Here is a link to how different personality types may respond to Social Isolation.

In Troubled Times

If for one moment
we could stop 
the tsunami of words

drop down deeply 
into silence

roll silence out’
into the world

If for one moment 
we could live 
silence

we would find
our way back
to sanity

-    Antoinette Voûte Roeder, Edmonton, AB

April 15: To Live Without Guilt by Robin Merrill Shaw, Collingwood

Robin Shaw is a model, influencer and social activist as well as an artist, poet and mother of a 3-year old. As a recently arrived “refugee” from Florida, she and her family spent the required 14 days in quarantine. Even when she was finally able to leave the house, she found herself torn between her duties as a mom and her own needs. She captures the dilemma many housebound parents are feeling during these challenging times in her poem “To Live Without Guilt.”  If you’d like to follow Robin on Instagram, you can find her @robinxshaw; here’s one of her videos about making handwashing with toddlers a game.

To Live Without Guilt

To live without guilt... impossible. Improbable. Unlikely. 
Seems like advice they give you
when they don't know
or have forgotten 

the crumpled lips
breaking into a jack-o-lantern frown
Tear-streaked face a red
arrow to the heart

My duty is here, home
To nurse his tired body to sleep
To rub his back and soothe his hurting
To be here when he wakes

In between I scarf down food like a wild animal 
Rabid. 
Tearing at the mail. 
Running between rooms. 
Half dressed. Half fed. Half clean. 
Half believing I'm not enough. 

That awful voice
We all have it
Don't feed it
Or it eats you alive

He stirs

Even with everything started and nothing done 
I am elated. 
Even though 'my' time is up 
I gladly surrender myself to his needs 
Always above mine. 
Always above all. 

But then, what am I teaching him?
What am I teaching myself?
What if I asked for help?
What if I let go?

Impossible. Improbable. Unlikely. 
I could never defer to another. 
Mom knows best. 
And yet...

That other little voice. 
You deserve. You might need. You could. 
Growing and unfolding in my core
And on the lips of those that love me

Maybe I could step away for an afternoon 
and let him find comfort in someone other than me...
Impossible. 
Or actually what is that saying...
I'm possible. 

Shushing that nasty voice and encouraging self love 
I grab my keys and kiss my family goodbye
only for a little while, to do something for myself. 
To live. Without guilt. 

-    Robin Merrill Shaw, Collingwood

April 16: Renewal by Debra Currie

Debra Currie grew up in Collingwood and has lived in Duntroon since 1984.  She is a lay pastor and a published Christian author. Her first book A Short Fuse Burning (2010) was an Indie finalist in the ForeWord Book Of The Year Awards; her second, Escape To Killaloma (2018) received an honourable mention as did her third, Rifles To Redemption, which is currently awaiting publication. Debra loves hiking and photography and her poem is like a verbal photograph of a local scene. 

Renewal

I walk up the hill and listen. I hear the birds and feel the wind gently blowing on my face. The leaves don’t rustle in the forest, as they’ve yet to show their faces following a long and snowy winter. A woodpecker hammers away and the sound of it echoes in the woods. A squirrel darts around a tree, playing hide and seek with itself. The path is just visible as it winds its way past barren trees. Snow is slowly melting and the silence is all consuming. Everything is coloured in grey and beige. Old weathered bark is peeling off broken branches and soggy dead grass that has laid dormant under a frosty blanket of white, is awaiting renewal. Amidst all the drabness of that space is a small ray of light. It shines upon green moss which surrounds a large rock with a crack running across at an angle. The colour speaks of newness and rebirth. The ground is awakening and stretching its arms towards the sun. It wants to be recognized and loved for the beauty it brings. Soon the place will echo with voices, and the trees will sway and dance under the heavily laden branches of foliage. Wildflowers will spring from the earth and the smell of it will fill the senses with an aroma unmatched. Peace will descend upon my path and I will feel the presence of God guiding and upholding me. This place has become a refuge in the midst of chaos. It surrounds one and all with an open-armed embrace and says, “Welcome, my friend. Don’t be afraid. You have come home. I am here, and I love you.”  The forest speaks its own language and I understand and smile. Noise has been stifled and I am filled and satisfied beyond measure. Many will travel the path I’m on, but today I walk alone. I am not lonely. Comfort can be found in the stillness and I listen…waiting and softly breathing. I am free.

-    Debra Currie, Duntroon

April 17: Unnatural Causes by Lillian Allen

Lillian Allen was born in Kingston, Jamaica and is Canada's foremost dub poet, performing verses on social and political issues in a rhythmic, declamatory vocal style to reggae accompaniment. Her piece “Unnatural Causes” contrasts Canada’s image as the perfect multicultural nation with various images of poverty and homelessness in marginalized communities that are often ignored in national discourse. The line “All people are created equal except in winter” is a cynical reference to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came into effect April 17,1982.  Here is a link to Allen performing her poem “Unnatural Causes”.

Unnatural Causes 

The wind howled and cursed 
it knew no rest 
when it ran free 
it Was a hurricane 
to be watched and silenced 
silence makes you sit and rot 
even cactus fades 
against persistent drought 
they hope the poor will become acclimatized 
see how they 100k at skyrises 
and call them mountain peaks 
see how the sun greets them first 
in the city 
makes a rolling shadow 
Somewhere in this silvered city 
hunger rails beneath the flesh 
...and one by one, they're closing shops in 
the city 
.. the Epicure, the Rivoli on the porch...No 
Small Affair 
...No Small Affair-the Sequel...La Petit 
Cafe... The Bamboo 
The city, a curtained metropolitan glare 
grins a diamond sparkle sunset 
it cuts a dashing pose 
"The picture you sent on the postcard was 
wonderful! " 
It reminded me of a fairy land, 
a place where everything is so clean 
a place where everyone is happy 
and well taken care of 
...and the sky...the sky...it seems so 
Sound, so huge and so indifferent.”
Indifference passes through the wind 
the wind, it rains a new breed 
breeds a new passion 
the passion of inaction 
the inaction of politicians 
the art of avoiding issues 
the issues of culture 
the culture of exclusion 
the exclusion of the "political" and the 
powerless 
Somewhere in this our city 
in our governing chambers 
a watershed of indelight 
of neutered niceties, unctuous 
Click/ / / / / click/ / / / / click 
postcard perfect 
Dry rivers in the valley 
the thirst at the banks of plenty 
the room at the street-car shelter 
a bus stop bed 
    a bus stop bed 
      a bus stop bed 
You can make it through the winter if you’re ice 
gone frozen 
on many things 
bare back. no shelter 
iced hearts in the elements 
impassioned is the wind 
All people are created equal except in winter 
All people are created equal except in winter 
Right here 
on the front steps of abundance 
Caroline Bungle tugs her load 
stalks a place. invites a little company of 
sleep 
unclick/ / / /
this my dear is very unpostcardlike 
Not inclined to poses 
posturing only her plight 
a dungle of terror 
of lost hope 
abandonment 
an explorer in the arctic of our culture 
a straggler adrift 
cross our terrain of indifference 
a life unravelled 
seeks a connection 
a soul outstretched to the cosrnos 
Can you spare a little social change, please? 
a cup of tea      a cup of tea 
a place to sleep 
a job    a job    a job?????
"The last postcard you send was kinda weird... 
poor people, sleeping at the bus stop!?? 
Surely you don't have that there...”
"...anyways, I'm dying to come to Canada I'm a pioneer!" 

-Lillian Allen, Toronto

April 18: We Could Have Been Canada by Day Merrill

On April 18, 1775 the American War of Independence commenced in Concord, Massachusetts. Growing up in the USA, we all memorized Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” with its stirring first verse “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood  And fired the shot heard round the world.” Having lived in Canada for 25 years, I now have a different perspective, as reflected in today’s “found” poem based on a 2017 New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik entitled  “We Could Have Been Canada: Was the American Revolution such a good idea?” 

We Could Have Been Canada

And what if it was a mistake from the start? 
The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, 
the creation of the good old
US of A.

What if all this was a terrible idea?
What if the injustices and madness of American life since then 
occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers 
but because of them? 

The Revolution, this argument might run, 
was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders’ panic 
mixed with Enlightenment argle-bargle, 
producing a country marked for violence, disruption, demagogy. 

Look north to Canada.
We could have become part of a social-democratic commonwealth 
stretching from north to south, east to west
a near-continent-wide Canada.

The thought is taboo! The Revolution the last bulwark 
of national myth, its strange sanctity grasped only by 
leaving America for a country with 
a different attitude toward its past and its founding. 

Oh, the Canadian experience was not free of sin‒
the indefensible treatment of First Nations people, 
the “colonial cringe” that bedevils countries 
overattached to the motherland. 

Still, there is something to be said, 
however small, 
for government by an elected empire élite 
devoted to compromise.

Ah, but in confrontations between empire and rebels, 
Are not our hearts always with the rebels?
The Revolution was reimagined as a Tale of Glory
(though nearly all its makers died in their beds)

Those who suffered most were 
not those who benefitted most
and the lucky ones wrote the story.
We carry that proud burden even today.

Born in violence, raised in unrest, torn asunder in civil war,
insistence on the one “right” way to be American
v. peaceful continuity, two languages, double and triple identities
reform, not revolution (the Queen still there, aging, on the twenty-dollar bill)

Just think: we could have been Canada.

-    Day Merrill

April 19: Deep Deep Down There's a Ray of Sunshine by Patrick Keating

Patrick Keating is a Canadian singer/songwriter well known in Collingwood as leader of the local band Hot Pants. A world traveller, Patrick has a deep understanding of many different cultures and has expressed them perfectly in his delightful children’s book We Share This Place. In this poem, you can almost hear the music to accompany his words as he plays with the image of a ray of sunshine, something we expect to find “way up high,” not necessarily “deep deep down.” If you’d like to order a copy of his book, contact Patrick at travellingpatrick@hotmail.com

Deep Deep Down There's A Ray of Sunshine

Deep deep down there's a ray of sunshine
A ray of hope for you and me
I know you can feel the sunshine
and taste the fruit right off the tree

It's funny how I used to worry
Worry about what tomorrow would bring
Now I'm back Sent from my iPad 
Here and Now is where we sing

Deep deep down there's a ray of sunshine
through the smokestacks by the sea
I know we need to unwind
rest a while and slowly breathe
Tell time from a ray of sunshine
Take a chill pill and have a seat

Deep deep down there's a ray of sunshine
A ray of hope for you and me
All we need is to stay connected
Communicate and plant more trees
Think about simple solutions
live our lives and be free
Now doesn't that sound real easy
Soft and easy just like a breeze

-    Patrick Keating, Singhampton

April 20: Love’s Message by Andrea Mathieson

Andrea Mathieson is an artist, writer and guide who offers Women's Circles, private retreats, intuitive consultations and flower essences. She specializes in listening deeply‒to her clients, her own heart and the natural world, from the tiniest of elements to the entire planet. In a recent Facebook post, she quotes David Abrams: The future will be sculpted by the elemental friendships and alliances that we choose to sustain us, by our full-bodied capacity for earthly compassion and dark wonder, by our ability to listen, attentive and at ease, within the forest of our unknowing." Her poem is a message from a personification of what we all need: Love. 

Love's Message

I know you think that all you need is love.
Most everyone feels this too.
But do not shrivel and turn away
then hungry, search the earth for love. 
I want you to drop all longing
immediately
and turn to me with your body’s slow, wise ear. 
Be still — 
wherever you are
right now
be very, very still. 
I want you to know with every measure conceivable
with each breath that flows in and out of your body
that you are bathed in love,
already.
You may not have the eyes to see
nor the heart to feel completely
but you do have all the love you need, right now
right where you are. 
At the bus stop,
in your kitchen, at your desk,
love is already present.
Pressing against the thin bark of your skin,
waiting to feed you at the bottom of each breath, 
fire-dancing through your body’s veins,
love shifts every grain within you. 
You are an operating system of love.
This is the fact.
You are an operating system of love.
Can you be still
yea, for three seconds
and feel this reality? 
You do not need to hunt for love.
Let go your voracious appetite and turn —
stare down the nagging little fears that whip and starve you. 
I yearn for you to feel my touch,
to recognize me in any of my disguises.
See‒I hold a cloak before you.
The patient earth would be your clothing.
Wrap yourself in any of my rich fabrics.
What would you desire from my garden:
Rose-petals, red and thickly scented or salty strands of seaweed?
Caress of wind-whispers or heavy granite veins?
Thick tree-trunks or bulrush reeds?
Endless rainbow carpets or fragile butterfly wings?
Create your cloth from this array
and weave it with your ardent breath.
Now rest inside this sumptuous cloak.
Stand very, very still.
Look out upon your world 
and say with me‒
I am love.                                                               
-    Andrea Mathieson, Port Hope
 

Writing Workshops and Writing Prompts

Nuts and Bolts of a Poem & Explore Form & Terms

Canadian writing guru Brian Henry leads writing workshops now online and publishes the Quick Brown Fox blog and monthly newsletter of helpful tips and resources.

How to Make a Visual Poem

Click on the heading below for the full Blog:

December's Promise

A Time for Remembering
What’s On?
Say the Word
The Death of Summer
Oh Canada! Poetry and Identity
Poetry: Good for Your Well Being
April is Poetry Month!
The Rhymes They Are a Changing
The Rising Popularity of Poetry–Who Knew?
Poetry in 2019–the Trend Line is Good
 

December's Promise

If you do it right, December is all about waiting. Yes, winter comes early here at the foot of the Escarpment and it’s tempting to go into Full Frontal Decorating mode the minute Remembrance Day and the Santa Claus Parade have occurred. But there is something to be said for spreading out the holidays to create the special joys of…anticipation.

In our household, Christmas doesn’t start until the night of December 24th, so for the first 24 days of the month, it’s all about Advent: the planning, the build-up, the joys of the journey as we look forward to the joys of arrival.

While we think of Advent as a Christian season, the word “advent” can be used to anticipate the arrival of any notable person, thing or event. It’s not the culmination, but the waiting that’s key to full enjoyment. There’s even a genre of poetry called “waiting poems.”

A well known poem by Rudyard Kipling begins with the conjunction “If” (If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you) and keeps us waiting for 5 stanzas full of “ifs” until we reach the “then” of the final lines: “Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”

Maya Angelou employs an extended metaphor in her poem “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” which opens with a brief description of the free bird.  She uses the rest of the poem to describe the woes of the caged bird, waiting until the final line of to reveal the answer: “the caged bird sings of freedom.”

In his love poem “Always,” Pablo Neruda extolls the virtues of waiting in full acceptance of what has come before, trusting that the future‒unhampered by the past‒is what we make of it

Always

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
hich flows down to the wild sea,w
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!

Waiting for the “advent” of something anticipated is a big part of human existence. We have been blessed/cursed with the ability to contemplate the future as well as ruminate on the past. The traditional Advent wreath we now associate with the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas captures both sides of that reality. Its pagan origins tied to the much earlier celebration of the Winter Solstice, the wreath is created out of evergreens, symbolizing everlasting life in the midst of winter and death. Its candles serve as a reminder that even on the darkest nights of winter, the flame of hope and promise of warmer, lighter days shines bright.

Whatever our faith tradition, we are all tied together by the rhythms of the seasons as we make our annual journey around the sun and balance the two elements of looking back and looking ahead. So whether you celebrate the miracle of light that is Hanukah, the return of the sun on the Solstice or the birth of a long-awaited one at Christmas, may you have a blessed Advent.

Here’s a poem I wrote about walking around Collingwood’s “Tree Streets” at dusk, in both remembrance and anticipation.

Adventageous

Silent and well-behaved,
the houses sit on the quiet streets
like guests at tea.
Stately brick centuries and fussy Victorians peer over
hedges at the upstart capes and bungalows.
Here and there, a snout-house
sticks out like an errant tradesman
who has wandered into
the parlour.

Trim garden sheds peek shyly from backyards.
Lacy gazebos dance on the lawns.
Old woodsheds stand with their backs
to the laneways, vigilant nursemaids watching over
each leaf and stick lest the
cheeky squirrels overstep their bounds.
A new garage at the end
of a driveway declares:
I am here now; they have arrived!

As the earth tilts toward
dusk,
the waning light of the sun is
a brushstroke, the faces
of each house gold
in a pool of purple shadow.

By dark, the street has become
an Advent Calendar– interior scenes
revealed behind numbered doors.
Windows frame a lamp glowing on a table,
a cat draped across a chesterfield,
a child waiting for someone she loves.

Arriving at your own house,
you find the final door,
the big one saved for last: Christmas Day.
As your hand turns the knob,
light from the lamp seeps under the door and
you hear the cat thud onto the living room floor. Your
child leaps from the window to greet you.

As you take her into your arms,
You give thanks that you have made it
through all the days, all the waiting and
you open your heart to the gifts of
love and memory.

A Time for Remembering

November is a two-faced month. The early winter we can usually count on in Southern Georgian Bay coupled with the annual Santa Claus Parade speaks to the beginning of the Christmas/Holiday season. But before we celebrate with excitement and anticipation we put on our poppies and mark Remembrance Day with a mix of gratitude and sorrow.

This year I had the opportunity to produce a Remembrance Week event in collaboration with Ali Giedraitis, founder of Collingwood-based 5th Street Creative Collective. At his invitation, I created an evening called Poems of War and Remembrance‒A reflection on war through the lens of the written and spoken word.

It was a remarkable evening. Poems ranged from the standards for the Great War such as “In Flanders Field” to those lesser known, focused on other wars and/or composed by local poets. We heard “In Flanders Now,” an “answer” to John McCrae’s challenge written by Canadian poet Edna Jaques who was born on Fourth Street in 1891 and was buried in Trinity United Cemetery when she died in 1978. Many thanks to Carole Stuart of the Collingwood Public Library who unearthed the poem and its remarkable story.

Susan Wismer performed “Dresden Cup,” an original poem about 3 china teacups with saucers found abandoned on a roadside in Germany during WWII, gently rescued and brought to England in 1945, eventually finding their way to Canada after the war. Ali read “Perhaps” by his friend poet Eric Fried, a Holocaust escape, in both the original German and English. Harold Zuckerman shared the translation from Yiddish of “January 13, 1943” by Holocaust survivor Herschel Zynoberg, who came to Canada in 1947. Tyler Cleary and Ella Pankatz shared her powerful piece “A Tangled Ball of Yarn,” a poem in two voices based on the email correspondence between a mother and her son on active duty in Afghanistan.

The poem I was asked to create for Remembrance Day was informed by my musings as a “wordie” that “remembering” is more than just a mental or even emotional action. Here it is.

“Re-Membering:”

Some wars are just, or at least justified, others based on greed or graft.

All wars are an admission of defeat–

a failure of diplomacy, civility, love.

If the pen (or keyboard) is mightier than the sword,

then poets are well equipped to take up arms.

But to what end?

The job of poetry is neither to exalt war nor to condemn it.

It is to stand clear-eyed, a caring yet objective witness and recall

without flinching what we do to each other and ourselves

in war.

What’s On?

October has to be one of the most-jam packed months of the year!  From the Jewish High Holy Days at the beginning through Canadian Thanksgiving in the middle to Halloween at the end, there’s a lot of action this month, and every town his its “thing” from Meaford’s Scarecrow Invasion, Thornbury’s Apple Harvest Festival to a rolling series of events at Blue Mountain Village. Whatever your gustatory interest, there’s cider to guzzle, whiskey to sip and wine to sample.

This year, there’s one other big event added to the mix: the Federal Election on the 30^th. Whether you consider it something for which to give thanks or a trick v. a treat, what we do on the 30^th will shape the next phase of our nation’s history. Unlike our neighbours to the south, our election process is downright civilized. Once the election is called, there’s a relatively short period of time for the candidates to make their pitches (sometimes more against the other candidates than for themselves). Thanks to early voting, we can make our selection over a period of days at convenient times and places.

Given the turnout in recent elections, we seem to take the process for granted. In countries where voting is required, turnout is understandably high but many countries that don’t have a compulsory voting system get strong turnouts: Sweden (82.6% in 2014), South Korea (77.9% in 2017), Israel (76.1% in 2015) and New Zealand (75.7% in 2017). Especially where the right to vote was hard won, voter turnout seems to soar: 97.5% of Rwandans showed up for their 2010 election.

In Canada, voting in federal elections is a right enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms for all citizens age 18 years and up. But it wasn’t always like that. In Canada’s early years, only men age 21 or older who owned property could vote. Women along with Asians and Aboriginal people and others have had to fight for the right to vote in Canadian elections. In all cases, vocal advocacy made a big difference.

The cause of women's suffrage in Canada began in 1876 when Dr. Emily Stowe arrived in Toronto to practice medicine. As the first, and for many years the only woman physician in Canada, Stowe expressed her interest in all matters relating to women by becoming a public speaker on topics such as "Woman's Sphere" and "Women in the Professions." In 1877, she attended a meeting of the American Society for the Advancement of Women and came home committed to establishing a similar union among Canadian women. Suffrage being a contentious topic,  she and a friend decided to fly under the radar and established the less-threatening sounding Toronto Woman's Literary Club.

In its first 5 years, the club grew quickly and benefited from the support of women including Laura Elizabeth McCully, Great-niece of Jonathan McCully, a Father of Confederation and a published poet. As one of the first generation of Canadian women for whom university education was possible, McCully obtained a BA and MA from the University of Toronto, during which time her commitment to women’s suffrage and feminism emerged. Inspired by British suffragists who could fight for a cause, stand firm against injustice and make personal sacrifices, she participated in suffrage rallies, joined the rebranded Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association and wrote about women’s rights. With the pen as her sword, she described the inequality women faced and linked the desire for suffrage to increased education.

Another poet (among other things) whose name is synonymous with the women's suffrage movement in Canada is Nellie McClung. McClung not only changed Canada's political landscape and influenced women's rights worldwide but found the time to raise 5 children and write a dozen best-selling books, including poetry. Cognizant always of the power of language, McClurg remarked  “I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place.” Voting rights for women was part of her legacy of truth, as was the knowledge that there are times when words alone can shine light onto dark place. One of those words was and remains today: Vote!

Here’s a poem I wrote about voting the day after the hearings that led to the conformation of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.

Pajama Day–September 27, 2018

Pajamas are the refuge of girls and women.

We stay in them to ride out a snow day or cramps,

we curl up in them to read alone and wear them to sleepovers.

They are our safety blanket.

They remind us of childhood and innocence,

what we put on after a hot bath,

basketball practice,

a Debate Team victory.

Pajamas are the great leveler.

Whatever we wear during the day–

the business suit with killer heels,

the school uniform with the skirt rolled up,

the scrubs under the white coat that bestows legitimacy–

when we come home and get into our PJ’s,

we are all that teenage girl happy to just be,

without the need to create any impression.

I spent the entire day in my pajamas yesterday,

glued to CNN as the confirmation hearing

raised my hopes, then confirmed my fears.

Advice to all women:

never forget (or underestimate) how much they hate us.

Our very existence is an insult to the privileged patriarchy

that blusters and blubbers like a thwarted preppie

when we have the audacity to call out their actions and lies

while trying to remain “collegial”

wishing we could be more “helpful”

barely maintaining our shaken composure.

Yesterday was our Kent State–proof we are finally on our own.

Sworn testimony from three women dismissed as untrue or irrelevant

by alpha males who trumpet their support for a sexual predator

like bull elephants protecting a watering hole.

After the hearings ended, I stripped off my pajamas and got dressed,

readying myself for leaving the house to

walk the dog, visit a friend, meet a client,

vote.

-Day Merrill

Say the Word

September is back-to school month here in the Northern Hemisphere. Even for those of us who have been out of school for years (or decades!), there is something about September that calls us “back” from the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. So in honour of school days and seriousness, I’m focusing this month’s blog on the building blocks of all literature– words.

Let’s start with the word “word” itself. While fairly straightforward in its origins and original meaning, this little noun has grown legs if not wings over time. The Oxford English Dictionary notes no fewer than 12 different “definitions” for word ranging from the prosaic “single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing” to the ethical as in “his word is his bond” to the pugilistic “them’s fightin’ words” to the permissive “just say the word.”

If there are this many denotations and connotations derived from this basic element of speech, is it any wonder that linguistic confusion arises over more complex words?  Add to that the nuances of culture and you can get chaos. When I moved to Canada from the US, I discovered that we were two countries separated by a common language. I was passingly familiar with the King’s English from having studied Brit Lit in college (which in the US means an institution of higher learning where you can get a 4-year degree that doesn’t have any doctoral programs). But Canadian English that straddles the border with its neighbour/neighbor to the south while remaining somewhat connected to Mum across the pond was challenging to analyze/analyze. Definitely not black and white–more like 50 shades of grey/gray.

Here’s how a simple difference in a word’s meaning can lead to, well…having words! At the consulting firm I joined, we had regular meeting to talk over process issues and client challenges. I had something I wanted to bring up at the meeting and asked my manager to include it on the agenda. Laconic at best, he replied, “I’m going to table that for this meeting.” Surprised by his apparent dismissal, I pressed further for the topic to be included. He said somewhat testily, “I said I was going to table it.” I felt rebuffed, as this was an important issue. I tentatively responded, “Yes but,” when it occurred to me that I might be missing something. I asked him what he meant by “tabling” an item and he replied that it meant including. I apologized for my truculence, explaining that in the US to “table” something means to set it aside for another time. Whew! Communication problem solved/war averted!

Despite its many challenges, those of us who love language do so because it is endlessly fascinating. We look up word origins for fun (learning early on the distinction between entomology and etymology). We savour a good turn of phrase like a sip of great wine. We memorize bits and prices of other people’s words and we pen words of our own, in both cases marvelling at what can be created out of thin air. Mostly we play with words–we love clever wordplay, jokes that depend on a linguistic twist and yes- puns. We learn the plurals of species (a murder of crows, an exaltation of larks) and revel in new language created to describe emerging phenomena. We are grammar freaks and punctuation police, abjuring the Dangling Modifier almost as much as the Grocer’s Apostrophe–both seen as an attack on linguistic propriety.

If we are fortunate, this love of words leads us through a realm of literature that includes all genres. And if we are very lucky, we find a home in language distilled to its sweetest essence: poetry. For us the lyrics of the Beatles song The Word resonate at a very deep level:

Say the word and you'll be free

Say the word and be like me

Say the word I'm thinking of

Have you heard the word is love?

For people like us, language is glorious. It’s “so fine, it's sunshine.” From ancient words we can barely translate to familiar words we grew up on to emerging new linguistic forms that delight us, we love words. And we hope you do too. On Saturday, September 21^st we’ll be playing with words as part of the Collingwood Art Crawl. In addition to the art and music you’ll find up and down Hurontario and Simcoe Streets, words will have their own venues.

• Look for our 5 interactive “Progressive Poetry” sites posted along the event and add a line of your own to build a community poem.
• Take a crawl break and join us for some inspiring words at the Literary Arts Lounge located at the Simcoe Street Theatre. We’ll be screening both the the Awen’ Gathering Circle Dedication featuring Dr. Duke Redbird reading his poem “The Power of the Land” and Place Holders, an initiative of local poets reading their original poems about special places in Collingwood.
• From 7:30-(;00, we’re hosting an Open Mic session on stage for anyone who wants to share a favourite or original piece of writing, so come read or listen.

The Literary Arts Lounge has been named one of the Art Crawl’s “unmissables” so be there or be square. Word!

This month’s poem is one I wrote about language in relation to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. As you read it, ask yourself what do you want new language for?

The Death of Summer

Sometime in August, the light begins to change. Days may still be warm–brutally hot even–but a shift occurs. As plump apples slip to the ground and sunflowers open their faces to the sky, little signs of fall start to appear. I see it first in the birch tress, among the earliest to release yellow leaves that flutter in the breeze like tiny prayer flags before drifting onto the grass. The calendar tells us that summer ends mid-September, but we sense otherwise. And as much as we look forward to cozy sweaters and pumpkin lattes by a crackling fire, we feel sad.

Have you ever noticed that we humans seem to be much better at beginnings than endings? Beginnings–a new life, a new love, a new job, a new home–seem so full of promise! Over time, the bloom inevitably fades from all the roses, but the endings hit us the hardest. Contrast the feelings evoked by the birth of a baby and the death of a loved one, a wedding and divorce proceedings, getting hired v. getting fired, moving in and leaving. 

Perhaps some of our perspective is formed by the one characteristic that separates us from the rest of creation: foreknowledge of death. Once we are old enough to realize that everything, everyone including ourselves will die, our lives always contain– sometimes at the edges and sometimes at the centre–a tinge of melancholy. Unlike the joyous bird the 19th century English poet John Keats describes in his “Ode to a Nightingale,” we humans are unable to “sing of summer in full-throated ease.” Despite our attempts to keep it at bay, we never “quite forget what thou among the leaves hast never known,” the unavoidability of death. 

It has always seemed ironic to me that as humans we are poised on the dual-edged sword of foreknowledge. While we may not know the day, the time, the place or the circumstances, we do know that at some point we will die. How do we live with this knowledge?  As best we can. In the poem “They Are Not Long,” Ernest Dowson (another 19th century Brit) states, “They are not long, the days of wine and roses,” a realty that prompted 17th century British poet Robert Herrick to advise “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Finding moments of beauty and meaning in a life we are aware is inexorably hurtling toward an appointment with death is an act of courage. 

And there are plenty of those moments, as the 20th century American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti says in his poem “The Coney Island of the Mind, 
    The world is a beautiful place to be born into… the best place of all
    for a lot of such things as 
    making the fun scene
    and making the love scene
    and making the sad scene
    and singing low songs and having inspirations
    and walking around
    looking at everything
    and smelling flowers
    and goosing statues
    and even thinking
    and kissing people and
    making babies and wearing pants
    and waving hats and
    dancing
    and going swimming in rivers
    on picnics
    in the middle of the summer
    and just generally
    'living it up' 

Even though Ferlinghetti ends the poem with the stark reminder that “right in the middle” of life comes “the smiling mortician,” we can capture moments–in memories, in pictures and in poems. The two poems I’ve posted this month are related to death. 

The first is in honour of Alex, a homeless transgender teen who took his life in February. Alex was profiled in Collingwood Today writer Jessica Owen’s 2018 series on youth homelessness in our community (https://www.collingwoodtoday.ca/local-news/homeless-teens-treated-like-g...) and subsequently in No Home in Sight, the recent Collingwood Youth Film Club documentary on the issue (https://www.collingwoodtoday.ca/local-news/team-of-teens-produces-docume...). 

The second poem is for Collingwood native Kenneth McAlpine, whose own Amazing Race came to a tragic end this month when he was killed in a hiking accident. Accomplished chef, church elder, fierce competitor and committed fundraiser for local causes, he died on his 28th birthday, doing what he loved (https://globalnews.ca/tag/kenneth-mcalpine/).

Life may be short; embrace it.

Before the Bridge
for Alex
2000–2019

Before the bridge, the river flowed down into the lake.
Turning its face to the sun, it poured itself into the waiting.
No roads then, no paved walkways, no paths.
Just the river, the banks, the sun.
Deep pools and twirling eddies. Cool spots where trees 
bent down to kiss the river as it danced its way home.
Any dark places forged by nature in her wisdom, not by man.
Tumult from storms, thunder and lightning, not gunshots.
Ecstasy from the simple act of creation celebrating itself.

You sit before the bridge and seek solace, or is it redemption?
No matter, it is affirmation both sought and given by you and the river.

If I could, I would unroll the bandages of your life, 
Uncover the source of hurts that have been done to you,
that you have done to yourself.
Winding back the years, exposing 
the bare flesh of your life to sun and light 
until you were like that baby in the manger,
Tiny, new and perfect. 
Then I would swaddle you in something strong enough
to last your whole life through.

I am no miracle worker. I do not know how to keep you safe.
So I knit you poems with prayers stitched into every line,
Asking only that whatever god may be hold you 
in the love you have always deserved.

Falling Up the Mountain
for Kenneth McAlpine
August 26, 1991–August 26, 2019

Shooting stars,
tiny points of light that 
sizzle across the night sky as if propelled, 
fireworks tracing a bright arc before fading away.

Where do they come from, these stars? 
And where do they go after their short flight?
Questions as unanswerable as why is it 
that the best seem to be the ones taken from us?

We learn that all bodies are subject to the laws of gravity–
the obstinate pull of the earth that 
holds us safely in place 
yet claims us when we stumble,
and the figurative sense that 
demands seriousness–
both making grave men of us all.

A few must be ruled by a different force: levity–
a lightness of body, soul and spirt that 
defies physical laws and logic.
Gleaming as brightly in day as night, 
they require no dark sky to show their brilliance 
nor do they flame out with nothing left behind–
steadfast, they inscribe the heavens with an indelible radiance.

For every moment they are visible
and beyond, they shower the earth 
with luminosity and ignite in others
a fire of inspiration.

And when their ending time arrives, 
while it may appear that
they have fallen down, in truth
they have but risen up.

Oh Canada! Poetry and Identity

 “The world needs more Canada.”

-Bono

On July 1^st, we get the jump on our American cousins and celebrate our country. The anniversary of Confederation isn’t just a time to look back on 1867 and the coming together of 4 disparate areas into a nation, over time to be joined by 9 more. Canada Day is also an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a Canadian today and imagine the future for our country. 

While this is true in the US as well, and we share equally in a love of hot dogs, fireworks and summer fun, Canada is, well…different. Like our language, we straddle the gap between Americanism and Briticism, with French thrown in and an increasing degree of input from the more than 250 origin cultures swelled by our vibrant immigrant populations (not to mention our indigenous roots).

We have been formed by our languages and our geography, and this is reflected in everything we see, do and have–including poetry. At this point, “Canadian poetry” encompasses poetry written in or about Canada in the official languages of English and French, a growing body of work in Indigenous languages and contributions influenced by the cultures new Canadians bring with them when they settle here.

Here’s a brief history of our poetical journey:

• English Canadian poetry began to be written soon after European colonization started. Early works, primarily written by visitors for a European audience, often described the new territories in glowing terms, like Robert Hayman's Quodlibets, composed in Newfoundland and published in 1628.
• As English language communities grew toward the end of the 18^th century, poetry for local readers started appearing in the newspapers. This poetry was highly referential to English poetry of the same period, like Oliver Goldsmith's The Rising Village, which he wrote in 1825 as a response to The Deserted Village by his great-uncle and namesake Oliver Goldsmith.
• Many of Canada’s first celebrated poets come from the mid to late 19^th century. The first post-Confederation book of poetry published in Canada was Dreamland by Charles Mair (1868), followed by works from a group of poets known as the "Confederation Poets." Drawing on nature and their own experiences, Charles G. D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and William Wilfred Campbell were joined by at least two women: Isabella Valancy Crawford and E. Pauline Johnson, who wrote poems based on her part-indigenous heritage.
• French Canadian poetry, primarily from Quebec, also flourished in the 19^th century, later to  move through Modernism and Surrealism to develop a passionate and political  “voice” characterized by  vibrant imagery.
• As the 20^th century dawned, a number of poets penned Kipling-esque verse on topical events, like Robert W. Service’s  Songs of a Sourdough about the Klondike Gold Rush, the first “blockbuster” volume of Canadian poetry that sold over three million copies .
• The Great War inspired many poems including one of the most well-known war poems ever written, "In Flanders Fields" written in 1915 by John McCrae while he was serving as a surgeon in the Canadian Army. Marjorie Pickthall also received critical acclaim in this period.
• After the war, much Canadian poetry returned to a focus on “the poetry of place.” Newfoundland poet  E. J. Pratt wrote poems about maritime life and the struggle to wrench a living from the sea. The Canadian Poetry Magazine, founded in 1936, celebrated the traditional verse that “sold.”
• As the 20th century unfolded, Anglo-Canadian poets embraced European and American poetic innovations. Prairie poets such as Ralph Gustafson and Raymond Knister were moving away from traditional verse forms.
• The 1920s and 1930s saw the development of “modernist poetry” via young poets such as A.J.M. Smith, A.M. Klein, and F. R. Scott. Their "new poetry" signaled a shift in focus from human emotions and descriptive language to more cerebral topics and forms that valued intellect over sentimentality.

• Following World War II, a new breed of poets (James Reaney, Jay Macpherson, Leonard Cohen), emerged onto the scene writing for a well-educated audience.  Older poets such as Irving Layton, Raymond Souster, Harold Standish and Louis Dudek branched off in a different direction, adopting colloquial speech in their work. While both Toronto and Vancouver developed as important poetry centres, due to its exposure to both English and French poetry, Montreal became a veritable cauldron of poetical progress via movements such as the Montreal Group and Les Automatistes.
• The 1960’s celebrated 100 years of nationhood and inspired a renewed sense of Canadian identity.  Familiar published poets like Al Purdy, Milton Acorn and Earle Birney were joined by new voices: Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Eli Mandel and Margaret Avison.
• In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, poets  such as bpNichol, David UU, Joe Rosenblatt, Steve McCaffery, Judith Copithorne and bill bissett engaged in greater experimentation and the TISH Poetry movement in Vancouver saw innovation from Jamie Reid, George Bowering, Fred Wah, Frank Davey, Daphne Marlatt, David Cull, and Lionel Kearns.
• Later in the 20^th century, poets embraced a full range of forms and movements, including Modernism, Confessional poetry, Postmodernism, New Formalism, Concrete and Visual poetry and Slam, always turned to a uniquely Canadian frequency.
• In the 21^st century–just when poetry was presumed dying if not dead–Indo-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur revived the genre to become the fastest growing sector of the publishing market today. If you Google “21^st century Canadian poets” you will have hundreds of entries to choose among.
• Finally, in the later 20th century and beyond, a growing awareness of Native identity coupled with the struggle for Indigenous rights has recognized and supported writing by Native Canadians, this land’s very first poets.

Like our country, Canadian poetry spreads far and wide, embracing new forms while still cherishing the old. Unlike our neighbours in the US, we Canadians prefer to celebrate v. minimize our differences, combining them in unique ways rather blending them into a “Melting Pot.” As a result, our country (and our poetry) is more like a beautiful and sturdy patchwork quilt fashioned from many diverse pieces. That’s the imagination I employed when asked to write a poem for the Citizenship Reaffirmation Ceremony that has become part an annual highlight of Collingwood’s July 1^st celebrations. You’ll find it in the Poetry Corner; Happy Canada Day!

Poetry, The Language of Love

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race…filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

Moon, spoon, June; sprawled on a dune, the cry of a loon, over too soon. Maybe one of the reasons we associate the month of June with love is because it rhymes so nicely with all these “love-ly” words! Or perhaps it’s because we’re aware (even unconsciously) that June is named after Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and wife of supreme deity Jupiter. Given that, it’s no surprise that in ancient Rome, the month of June was seen as favourable for weddings. Given that June contains the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, there are plenty of long days for nuptial celebrations. 

June's birthstone is the pearl, a gem believed to signify purity and beauty, making it the traditional choice for brides. This has been the case since the time of the Ancient Greeks who believed that pearls were the tears of the gods (one reason why we cry at weddings?) The official flower for June is the red rose, an ancient flower with a long cultural history. In ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with Aphrodite., the goddess of love, who protects the body of Hector using rose oi. The flower itself is supposedly red because while supporting Adonis (Aphrodite got around), she wounded herself on one of its thorns and stained the flower red with her blood. Later the rose came to be identified with the Virgin Mary, a symbol that has endured in the rosary 
Love poetry seems very appropriate for June, as it is often significant events that prompts us to read or pen a verse to take a step back and make sense of deep emotion. Whether it is new love found, love’s labour’s lost or any other variation, poetry enables to mediate the immediacy of experience through the lens of language. Poet Omar Sakr notes that while “emotions are battering rams that do not wait for you to describe them prettily,” poetry corrals heightened emotions and transmutes them into images, metaphors, words. Poetry seems particularly well suited to love (and its all too frequent companion pain), among the strongest of human emotions.
Poet and retired professor Robert Mezey once remarked, “Prose is an opening form. Poetry is a closing one," so whatever the genre, good poetry should provide “linguistic closure.” Even if the narrator leaves the poem’s topic unresolved, there is “a finality of language–a satisfying precision, throughout the work and especially in the poem's last line.”

Here are some of my favourite last lines from a random selection of love poems. I’ve noted the titles, so you can look up the full poem if you’re so inclined. And check out our Poet’s Corner for another heartfelt tribute to the enduring nature of love by local poet Sandra Parsons.

“i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)”
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by e.e. cummings.

“The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.”
Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore.

“You could make this place beautiful.”
Good Bones by Maggie Smith

“The words I love you could never be enough.
I suppose we’ll have to invent new ones.”
Untitled by Cristopher Poindexter

“My mother told me when you find the perfect woman, 
You gotta do whatever it takes to make sure she stays next to you.” 
To the Girl Who Works at Starbucks by Rudy Francisco

“There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.”
A Glimpse by Walt Whitman

“Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.” 
To the Desert by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open.
Turn off the music, listen to the quiet, whisper thank you for stopping by.” 
“When Love Arrives” by Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye

Poetry: Good for Your Well Being

‘as you are.’ says the universe...

- Nayyirah Waheed

May is Mental Heath Month. There are many factors that contribute to mental health and well being, but did you know that poetry is one of them? Recent literature on poetry therapy has suggested that poetry may be “an effective therapeutic tool” for patients suffering from a variety of ailments. This supports the idea that practicing poetry can positively contribute to greater psychological well-being by positively influencing emotions, engagement or “flow” experiences, social relationships, sense of meaning or purpose in life and personal accomplishments.

In an article entitled “The practice of poetry and the psychology of well-being,” author Adam M. Croom outlines the characteristics of psychological well-being proposed by psychologist Martin Seligman. In his book Flourish, Seligman asserts that our well-being depends on 5 factors he arranged in the acronym PERMA: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. In addition to Croom’s work, over 20 recent papers by different authors examine poetry therapy as a treatment modality for people with emotional disorders ranging from a psychotic patient, hospitalized schizophrenics, patients in a mental health centre and disturbed adolescents. 

Those of us who write and/or read poetry know that perhaps more than any other literary genre, poetry is a way to gain fuller awareness of self, others, the world. In addition to reading/listening to poetry, writing poetry can be a great tool for maintaining healthy mental wellness. The clarity that comes from a conscious expression of a thought or feeling conveyed in writing is a great vehicle for clearing the mind. The very act of writing can be a self-healing practice and when we share our work and interact with other writers, we gain an even better understanding of our thought processes. From ancient Norse literature and the Psalms to today’s Instagram poems, from traditional poetry from Zimbabwe and the Shona peoples to modern slam poetry, the universal language of rhythm if not rhyme enhances our sense of words, their meaning and their application to us.

If you are interested in exploring what poetry can do to enhance your own experience, here are a few ways you can explore the junction between words and well-being:

1. Write it out. There are several approaches to writing poetry that can help us become more introspective and expressive. Letter poetry is helpful when trying to resolve conflicts in personal relationships, as writing can help resolve longstanding pain and resentment, even if they are never sent. Another poetry “prompt” you can employ is to take a perspective that you don’t agree with on an issue; walking a mile or writing a verse in the shoes of someone with whom you've disagreed can help create and maintain empathy and an open mind. 

2. Tell your story. Capturing your story in a poem and then sharing it with others can be very empowering, an act that makes us feel validated and heard. Listening to other people’s poetry can also be impactful; when we hear others speak from the heart–even if they are talking about things that we don’t relate to creates a safe space that diminishes social insecurity. 

3. Free your mind/free your self. When slam poets want to encourage another performer who's sharing their truth, they often call out “Get free!” This phrase embodies what writing and performing poetry can do. When you write, keep your “inner editor” in check and let your thoughts and feelings flow without second guessing yourself, crossing things out or overthinking as you go; just focus on what you want to say so your poetry is as close as possible to your truth. You can always tidy up your wok later!

4. Embody your poems. A notable characteristic of all the performing arts is that along with the emotions and the mind, the body is always involved. Bringing the body, feelings and intellect together is recognized by mental health professionals as fundamental to our overall well-being and relates to how well integrated we feel our whole self to be in our society. When we read or recoite poems, the act of performance engages all parts of us.

5. Recognize that art is a necessity, not a frill. Mental health professionals have observed that children and adults who are deprived of art tend to suffer from insecurity and mental instability. As a result, various forms of art have been used in the treatment of patients with neurotic and psychotic problems. In particular, modern psychotherapists and psychologists have found a therapeutic value in poetry that engenders rhythmic movements. One psychologist noted that repetition of the same movement reduces inhibition, allowing repressed feelings to surface. And when people move synchronically, they identify with each other and their shared response gives them an even greater sense of unity. 

6. Mix it up. Because of its broad number of forms, poetry works for both serious and light-hearted topics. It also lends itself to ritual–think playground games and lullabies as well as weddings and funerals. Poetry is often combined with other art forms such as music and dance. As you play with words, notice if you are moved to add images, music, movement to your poems–all are allowed!

While any art form can be liberating, poetry allows us to express our feelings in so many ways. You can write about depression using a metaphor, such as ice cream melting on the sidewalk or you can express yourself more directly by using a more narrative approach. Whatever the form, the release of thoughts and emotions–often long-harboured, even buried– can be like exhaling after having held your breath for a long time. Writing allows us to be introspective in the creation of our work, and then communal in sharing our poems via oral recitation, publishing or on-line.  In addition, poetry impacts the mind by working both the left and right hemispheres of the brain, synchronizing those areas controlling the rationality and logic with those controlling the creative and the imaginative.

Here’s one more suggestion: educate yourself about mental illness. There are still stigmas about mental illness in our society. Too many people think of mental illness as something that can't happen to them and distance themselves from the topic. Others experiencing symptoms of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder have been taught to ignore or deny their experience as something to be ashamed of. If you or someone you know is suffering, writing poetry can help you process whatever you're going through, and reading poetry from writers who have had similar experiences can help you gain perspective and empathy. This is not to downplay the seriousness of mental illness, so if your feelings are debilitating and longstanding, do seek out help from a qualified mental health professional. If you are just in need of a tune-up, try poetry, starting with this reassuring poem by by Nayyirah Waheed that we chalked onto the sidewalk in front of Collingwood Town Hall in honour of Mental Health Month. 

— as you are

 ‘as you are.’ says the universe. 

‘after…’ you answer. 

‘as you are.’ says the universe. 

‘before…’ you answer. 

‘as you are.’ says the universe. 

‘when…’ you answer. ‘as you are.’ says the universe. 

‘how…’ you answer. 

‘as you are.’ says the universe. 

‘why…’ you answer. 

‘because you are happening now. 

right now. 

right at this moment and your happening is beautiful. 

the thing that both keeps me alive and brings me to my knees. 

you don’t even know how breathtaking you are. 

as you are.’ says the universe through tears. 

April is Poetry Month!

Spring is Sprung!

The spring is sprung, the grass is riz.

I wonder where the boidie is?

They say the boidie’s on the wing.

But that’s absoid. The wing is on the bird.

Unknown

Ah, Spring! April brings longer days, warmer weather and the unmistakable signs of Springtime: harbingers like the robins returning North and the first snowdrops pushing their way up out of the thawing earth. April is also National Poetry Month. Our blog this month is dedicated to all the activities that we’ve planned to celebrate poetry. Here’s the lineup:

April 1:Take a gander at the water tower. For one day only, the Town of Collingwood agreed to let us rebrand as “CollingWord.” Here’s a pic in case you missed it; that climb up to the top with the bucket of paint was a real challenge! (Photoshopped water tower pic for April Fool’s Day :  )

April 2:Today is a day for ranting–Rant poetry that is!While Rant poetry comes in all shapes and sizes, it’s most commonly defined as a free-verse prose poem about an exasperating subject. I’ll be leading a workshop on crafting a Rant poem for students in CCI’s FLEX program. Look for their creations in a future Poetry Corner.

All Month:Take a stroll along the Train Trail and see the latest StoryWalk installation, featuring the acrostic poems of Canadian author Carolyn Pignat from her book The Poetree. The Train Trail begins at the Station Museum at 45 St Paul Street. and the pages of Poetree are displayed in cases along the trail. StoryWalk is a collaboration between the Collingwood Public Library and the Parks, Recreation & Culture department.

 The library is also featuring poetry for all ages in the display case near the circulation desk, so take a look. 

“Poetry Kits” have been placed at the Collingwood Museum and Centennial Aquatic Centre. Each kit is loaded with ideas and tools for anyone to build their own poem.

Check out the Poetry Month display in one of the newly installed display cases at Central Park Arena. There are poems by some Canadian and international authors featured as well as a “spontaneous poetry wall” for anyone wanting to share their prose and musings.

April 13:Orangeville’s first annual Day of the Poets is an event all about poetry: reading, it, writing it and listening to it. There will be some workshops in the morning and all afternoon, local poets will be reading their poems from the Orangeville Library (yours truly will be appearing live-via-Skype at 12:30). And all over town, you will find poems in store windows. Check it out here:

https://www.inthehills.ca/2019/03/day-of-the-poets/

April 18:Poem in Your Pocket Day! Carry a poem in your pocket, recite it to staff at the Collingwood Museum or Centennial Aquatic Centre and you can get a pass for a free swim or skate I’ll be prowling the streets of Collingwood with poems in my pocket, so stop me if you like one. If you share one with me, I will pay any outstanding library fines! 

April 23:“Much like beer, poetry is an acquired taste.” Come to our first Pints & Poems evening and sample both! Hosted by Side Launch Brewing Company, this 19+ event is your chance to try your hand at creating a poem, reading some of your original poetry or sharing a favourite published poem while sampling some of the area’s finest brews.

Poetry all month long–a great way to welcome Spring. Here’s my favourite poem about spring by e.e. cummings, a poet who shed capitalization and punctuation like unneeded toques and mittens. And look in our Poetry Corner for a lovely poem about returning home to the area in Spring from local poet gloria kropf nafziger (who also eschews capital letters!)

[in Just-]

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee

e.e.cummings

The Rhymes They Are a Changing

In its most recent survey, the NEA foundsteep increases in poetry readership across the board, but especially among women, minorities and adults with only some college education. Poetry has also gotten a major boost among rural audiences: almost twice as many people from non-metro areas read poetry in 2017 than in 2012. So if this who is reading poetry, what are they reading?

These days, poetry is far more than words printed on a page, bound into volumes and sold in the poetry section of bookstores or tucked away in obscure corners of libraries.  A major reason for poetry’s growing popularity is that its definition has expanded.

One writer classifies poetry today as “broader, more viral and musical and culturally expansive, and therefore much harder to define and also harder to imagine going extinct.” If you look at Rupi Kaur’s books (milk and honey andThe Sun and Her Flowers), you’ll notice that she has combined words and images both on the printed page and on line, leading to her moniker as an “Instapoet.” Folksinger/songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literaturefor his “poetry.”In her short story,” English author Zadie Smith makes an oblique reference to Kanye West, saying, “He is one of the newer poets–the musical kind–and so his words tend to go everywhere, floating between our towers, rising above the city.”

And it’s not just how poetry is being written, but how’s its being accessed. Rather than settling into armchairs in stuffy clubs to read the classics with cups of tea, poetry fans today are accessing poetry via a range of social media. I subscribe to two daily poem feeds, one from the Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazineand Poem a Day from the Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem-day) Indolent Books (https://www.facebook.com/indolentbooks/), a publisher of poetry books and online projects has published a few of my poems and I receive regular updates on new submissions.

Various online literary magazines also appear on my email and Facebook feed and friends send me poems, often via social media (now that Facebook “knows” that poetry is one of my interests, all kinds of poems pop up on a regular basis–thanks, algorithm!) In addition, I get what I think of as poetry “bites” on my Instagram feed (to get started, here’s a link to 12 Instagram poets worth looking into: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/12-instagram-poets-to-follow_b_58fbc278e4b0f02c3870eb05. Even Twitter has gotten in on the act; @BestCdnPoetry (https://twitter.com/bestcdnpoetry?lang=en) will take you to a comprehensive list of the Best Canadian Poetry of 2018. Truly an abundance of riches!

Because poetry is meant to be experienced, not just read, there are now ample opportunities to engage other senses as well. Button Poetry (https://www.youtube.com/user/ButtonPoetry) broadcasts poets reading/speaking/performing their poems on YouTube. Live poetry readings/slams/spoken word events are all the rage in settings as varied as classrooms to bars (look for our upcoming Pints & Poems event next month). And poetry is not only being spoken, it’s being talked about. Last year PBS aired a series called Poetry in America on its stations and online. The show features wide-ranging and rich conversations about poetry with various celebrities in a format that expands the notion of poetry by marrying words and images to bring the genre to life in a new way.

The who, the what but what about the why? One of the reasons poetry matters again lies in its intrinsic nature–language compressed and intensified. Poetry has the ability to convey and comment on the sense of urgency many people report feeling in these turbulent times. All over the world, people are thinking and talking and debating about who we are and want we want to become (or return to). In an age when words are used as weapons, we seek clarity, comfort and hope in whatever words of wisdom we can find. When you pair this yearning for meaning with the availability of instant communication, it’s clear why poetry has been liberated from the halls of academia and the slick world of traditional publishing. Poets today live in and embrace what one reviewer terms “the fast-paced, democratizing, hyper-connected culture of the internet.” No longer the purview of the educated and affluent few, poetry is now available to all.

This may explain why so many of today’s poets as well as consumers of poetry are people marginalized by mainstream society: youth, women, immigrants and refugees, indigenous peoples/people of colour. When times are tough, they’re even tougher on those who are most at risk, and a result most likely to be involved in social protest and online activism. As poet Jane Hirschfield told the New York Times last year: "When poetry is a backwater, it means times are OK. When times are dire, that's exactly when poetry is needed."

The rules have changed, as our response to poetry no longer bound by academic dissection, as if we are meant “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it…beating it with a hose to find out what it really means” as poet Billy Collins says in “Introduction to Poetry.” At the same time, poetry invites us to slow down, to look/listen/think/feel–a refreshing break from the demands of the instantaneous "Like” response we’ve gotten used to on social media.

At their best, poems prompt as many questions as answers, generating uncertainty and mixed feelings. When we wish for easy answers to complex realties, poetry reminds us that its value lies as much in what it does to us as what we “do” to it. Next month is National Poetry Month. Let’s take the opportunity to celebrate nuance and ambiguity–the stuff of human existence–and set aside the blunt instrument of a black & white/either-or/right v. wrong mindset. For this ubiquitous contemporary ailment, poetry may be the best remedy.

Take a look at Poetry Corner for a short poem that tackles a challenging subject with candor and courage.

The Rising Popularity of Poetry–Who Knew?

The January blog outlined 5 emerging trends in poetry with the promise to explore each in more detail. This month, the focus is on the rising popularity of poetry, especially interesting as pronouncements that “poetry is dead” were being made as recently as 2015! Back in 1992, a major survey indicated that 17 percent of Americans had read a work of poetry at least once in the past year. Just 20 years later, that number had dropped to 6.7 percent. This decline was unique to poetry among the literary arts and represented the steepest decline of any literary genre. By 2015, the downward trend didn’t show any signs of abating.

In 2016, something happened: the number of print poetry books sold in Canada in 2016 grew almost 80% and then grew again in 2017. Last year, two of the Top 10 bestselling Canadian titles were Milk & Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers by Indo-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur and the final book of poems by Leonard Cohen became a best-seller when it was published posthumously in October. A similar renaissance is occurring in the UK and the US, meaning that poetry is now one of the fastest growing genres in the publishing industry worldwide.

What’s going on? Let’s look at the demographics for starters. Much of poetry’s growth is being driven by young readers, who experts say “hunger for nuance amid conflict and disaster.” In the aftermath of shocking world events, the words that spread are often not the words of politicians but those of poets. Susannah Herbert, director of the Forward Arts Foundation, which runs the Forward prizes for poetry and National Poetry Day says, “Almost everything a politician says is incredibly forgettable. There is a hunger out there for more nuanced and memorable forms of language.”

In a recent article in The Guardian entitled “Poetry sales soar as political millennials search for clarity” provides one explanation, Andre Breedt, of the polling firm Nielsen, confirmed that sales were booming. His theory is that in times of political upheaval and uncertainty, people turn to poems to make sense of the world: “Poetry is resonating with people who are looking for understanding. It is a really good way to explore complex, difficult emotions and uncertainty.”

Having grown up in the US in the 1960’s, I can relate to that. Sometimes it’s hard to find the words to express the fear, anger and resentment that bubbles up and boils over in tumultuous times. Just as we marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam war, teens and young millennials have become reengaged in political issues ranging from gun violence to climate change, and they want to be heard. Now as then poetry seems a particularly effective form to express strong sentiments. 

As Toronto poet Tara Farahani puts it, “Speeches are great, don’t get me wrong, but with poetry, every word is so intentional, every line you’re writing is intentionally building a story to make an impact.” David Silverberg, founder of the Toronto Poetry Slam, says that it’s not uncommon for poets who perform at the group’s twice-monthly events to draw on major world news for their poems, in part because of what he calls “the intimate, blunt nature of the medium.” 

Slam poetry and spoken word pieces are just a two of the formats by which poetry can now be accessed. The form’s brevity and availability of technology means poetry can also be consumed on phones and shared on social media. Rupi Kaur not only leads the bestsellers list with almost £1M of sales, she also has 3.4 million followers on Instagram. Her message is one echoed by many young poets: “You tell me to quiet down / cause my opinions make me less beautiful,” she writes in Milk and Honey, the #1 bestselling poetry collection of 2018, “but I was not made with a fire in my belly / so I could be put out.”

While almost 30% of poetry reader polled are between 18-35, poetry has re-emerged as a form to address important issues for poets of all ages. Our Poetry Corner this month features a local resident “of a certain age” who uses her poem “This Angry World” to speak out on an issue of import to all of us who inhabit “this great blue sphere we all call home.” I hope you enjoy it and will consider raising your voice–or pen–to speak out on any issue you believe needs attention and send it to us for consideration.

Poetry in 2019–the Trend Line is Good

Happy New Year! Each January, there are articles everywhere you look about starting the new year off “right.” Whether it’s “5 Easy Resolutions for Your Career” or “131 BEST New Year’s Resolutions” (yikes!), there’s no end to the advice available. Good news: this month’s blog is not one of them! When it comes to poetry, my only “advice” is “try it–you might like it!

That being said, I do have some thoughts to share with you on what’s happening in poetry in 2019. Here are 5 trends related to poetry you might find of interest. Over the next months, we explore each in more detail.

Here’s the big picture:

1. The popularity of poetry continues to rise

2. The audience for poetry is changing

Of those polled who read poetry, almost 30% were between the age of 18-35. Saul Williams, a famous slam poet (more about this later!) noted the cyclical nature of poetry’s popularity, “It’s always engaged a new generation of youth who have brought it back to the forefront of culture and put new terms on it.”

The survey showed steep increases in poetry readership across the board, but especially among women, minorities and adults with only some college education. Poetry has also gotten a major boost among rural audiences: almost twice as many people from non-metro areas read poetry in 2017 than in 2012.

3. The definition of what makes a poem continues to expand

An attendee at a local poetry event last year told me, “When I was in school, the teacher said that all we needed to know about poetry was “Ta-da, ta-da, ta da-da; Ta da, ta da, ta da;  ta da, ta da, ta da-da; ta da, ta da, ta da.” Wow-have things changed in the poetry world! Today, we’re approaching close to 100 recognized genres of poetry. Some of these forms have been “discovered” by Western writers in other cultures, like the Sijo (a Korean verse form related to Haiku but with more syllables) and the Ghazal (an Arabic verse form traditionally focused on love).

4.  The focus of poetry is changing

Not only is the “what” and “how” of poetry changing–increasingly, so is the “why.” Addressing personal, social and political issues has always been a means of “speaking truth to power.” In these fractious times, poetry has stepped out of the libraries and off the pages to march, protest and call out injustice. From the the #metoo movement and the call for justice from indigenous communities to the demand for equality by the transgender people, poetry has emerged as a chosen form to address important issues.

While focused on different themes, many poets are turning their talents to speak to key social issues and empower the disenfranchised. Short verses are being used to further social change by appearing not in books or journals, but on social media to raise awareness, written on banners at protests, even as tattoos to literally “embody” an idea.

5. How we access poetry is changing

We think of poetry as something we seek to read, but increasingly, poems come to us. Poetry in the public eye–usually combined with visual imagery–is a growing phenomenon. From the large-scale “activation” entitled Something to Say currently on display in and around the Brooklyn Museum in New York (https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/something_to_say) to the interactive Write the Wavesinstallation we created on the hoarding at the end of North Pine Street right here in Collingwood, poetry is getting out and about.

If approached with an open mind, poetry can be delicious and satisfying. So I’ve got just one New Year’s resolution for you to consider: make a point to add poetry to your reading diet in 2019. If you’re not sure how to begin, here’s what the poet Eve Merriam advises in “How To Eat a Poem”:

Don't be polite.

Bite in.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

        may run down your chin.

        It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

Poetry–good and good for you. Enjoy!

We invited local writers to select a park in Collingwood where they have a connection and create a poem about it. Fueling our imaginations and bringing to life the character of a place, is something poets do best and the result is a unique storymap including a video of each poet reciting their poem in the park. Go to Place Holders >>.

A community word-art installation at the waterfront promenade with words and quotes expressing thoughts about Collingwood.