Poet Laureate

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to discovering and celebrating poetry and making it available to a wide audience. The site contain numerous resources including Poem-of-the-Day, a free subscription.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem-day
Poem-a-Day is a free daily digital poetry series featuring over 200 new, previously unpublished poems each year. On weekdays, poems are accompanied by commentary by the poets with classic poems on weekends. 

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

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.

"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

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 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.

When I moved to Canada from the US in 1995, I was surprised to learn that not only do Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving, they do so in early October. I grew up in New England, literally descended from those stalwart Pilgrims that landed on the bleak shores of Massachusetts in November of 1620. With faith in the providence of the Almighty and considerable help from the indigenous people they encountered, they made it through the first winter. 

A year later, they held a feast to celebrate their survival and to thank their hosts, without whose practical support they would surely have perished. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln declared an official day of Thanksgiving in late November and by the 1930’s, President Franklin Roosevelt established the third Thursday in November as the fixed date in the US.

Of course, feasts of thanksgiving are not uniquely American or even North American. By celebrating our gratitude, we are part of a long line of people worldwide. From ancient harvest festival rituals to thanks-giving celebrations referenced in the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Quran and many other holy works, most include prayers, songs– and food!  While the origins of the holiday vary considerably from the American tradition, many of the fundamentals are the same: a time to give thanks and celebrate with family. 

Those early Pilgrim ancestors of mine continued to live in peace and harmony with their indigenous neighbours until the colonialization of North America started in full forth, and we all know how the story goes after that. How exciting it is that nearly 400 years later, we have reached the point when we are reconnecting with the indigenous peoples whose presence preceded us by millennia.

Last month I had the privilege of attending the opening ceremony for the Awen' Gathering Circle in Harbourview Park. This stunning structure sits on the hill as if it has always been there. It is a tribute to the vision of the crafters of Collingwood’s Waterfront Master Plan in collaboration with a host of others including a team of indigenous architectural designers and volunteers from the visiting Steelworkers Union who pulled off a miracle and got the project finished just in time for the ceremony. 

And what a ceremony it was! Participants from local indigenous communities contributed song, dance, words and ritual, to which all present were invited to join in as part of a larger community.  Ancient, old and new Collingwood plus visitors, workers and people of all ages gathered in an inclusive circle. The event not only celebrated a wonderful new addition to our town but marked a tangible contribution to the unfolding truth and reconciliation process of that is knitting us together into a larger shared community. 

What’s I’ve always loved about the Thanksgiving holiday is that it is not tied to any particular religion, or to religion at all. So whether you are thanking God, Jaweh, Allah, The Great Spirit, Mother Nature or what poet Dylan Thomas called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” this post is dedicated to all that we as Canadians have to be thankful for. Something I am personally thankful for every day and in every season is our beautiful lakeshore. Here’s poem about my impressions of what October looks like here in Collingwood. I hope you enjoy it; just as important, I hope you enjoy the month. I wish you a joyous Thanksgiving, a Happy Halloween and a splendid October from start to finish.

October Inc.

October is all business down at the lake. 

One day, it’s a navy blue suit paired with a freshly pressed sky, 
tied together with the blinding red and white striped lighthouse. 

When a board meeting is called, all is sober grey, 
a single burnt orange maple the only pop of colour. 

Night brings the corporate gala– 
A sea of little black dresses festooned with ruffles of foam 
dancing with a sky full of tuxes, starched shirtfront clouds offset by diamond stars. 

Casual Fridays call for a cerulean blue Polo above the khaki shoreline, 
and a line of leaf-bright tops that signal the weekend. 

But at the end of the month, all bets are off.
Time to cut loose as Halloween blows through the harbour, tipping dinghies
and winding lake-surf like toilet paper around the larger boats.  

The buoys ring like demonic bells into the night. 
At the head of the harbour, the jack-o-lantern glow of the LCBO 
promises treats to buffer the wind’s tricks. 

For a poem about gratitude for the simple things in life submitted by a local writer, check out our Poetry Corner and remember to mark your calendar for 25 Years, the BMFA sponsored event at the Simcoe Street Theatre on October 13th featuring poems written by Collingwood poet/graphic artist David Conning (who is also the co-owner of Clerkson’s). This unique theatre event will pair poems David wrote for his daughter over 25 years with music by the subject of those poems, Laura Conning and her partner in the band Honeymoon Phase. Something more to be thankful for.

A growing trend in the world of poetry is a phenomenon that places poetry–both written and spoken–in the public sphere. Cross-genre artists have been putting poetry in front of people in a range of visual and auditory formats all over the world. From Robert Montgomery’s spectacular works that include poems installed on billboards and words set on fire to Collingwood’s Planted Poetry installations in the Community Garden on Hurontario Street and the Library’s Garden Project on Simcoe Street, words are popping up in unconventional locations everywhere.

As your Poet Laurate, I am committed to putting poetry “out there” into the public realm and into the public discourse. For too long, people have been given the impression that poetry is something “highfalutin’” that belongs in a library or textbook. But poetry is infused in our culture in way we often don’t recognize: songs, TV commercials, inspirational posters and Facebook posts. 

I want to make poetry explicit, and like Montgomery, I’m interested in the idea that “mythology is essentially a type of speech, and that speech defines a culture.” I believe that poetry can define and refine the dominant languages we have in today’s culture: advertising and news media on the larger scale and social media and texting on the personal.

This month, we’re initiating a new venture that not only brings poetry to the people, it gives people the chance to discover that they can be poets themselves. During Sidelaunch Days, we’ll be launching The Poetry Booth, a “pop-up” literary installation placed at the foot of North Pine Street. Passersby will be invited to join in a poetic exchange that exists in both real time and on-line. Our goal is to encourage, capture and preserve the poetic life of Collingwood while providing a fun and interactive means for the public–residents and visitors alike–to engage with the written word. 

This booth is outfitted with a vintage typewriter-style keyboard called a Qwerkywriter, which makes a satisfying clattering sound reminiscent of the old-style typewriters that some of us remember. The keyboard is connected via Bluetooth to a tablet, enabling every keystroke to be collected and stored. Once reviewed by The Poetry Booth team at Collingwood’s Parks, Recreation and Culture Department, the output will be posted online at www.CollingWord.ca to be read, shared and commented upon. 

While each contribution to The Poetry Booth installation can be its own distinct poem, we’re hoping that participants will also be influenced by what was written before them on the tablet.  By using a new form of public dialogue, The Poetry Booth hopes to capture impressions of Collingwood–those gathered by the five senses (sights, sounds, tastes, smells and tactile elements) as well as those that spring from memories and recollections, current thoughts and feelings and sensed possibilities for the future.

Collingwood’s Poetry Booth is based loosely on The Typewriter Project, a program of The Poetry Society of New York. That initiative in turn was largely inspired by Exquisite Corpse, a surrealist writing game in which several authors contribute to one poem. We hope our installation furthers the genre of interactive public poetry.

If you’re around during Sidelaunch Days, come on down to The Poetry Booth and see what impressions, thoughts, feelings and ideas show up for you. Read what others have written, use our prompts for inspiration and then let your fingers do the talking. We can’t wait to see what you have to say! While you’re there, add your input to the adjacent Writing the Wave installation on the hoarding facing the harbour.

If you’re reading this post after August 12th, the Writing the Wave installation will be available for viewing until such time as the hoarding comes down. As for The Poetry Booth, check out this website’s Poetry Corner for submissions generated by the project, and let us know when and where you think The Poetry Booth should show up next. 

We’d love for The Poetry Booth to become a member of the Collingwood community, one that can connect us though the power of the word. As Montgomery says, the goal of true art is “to communicate our innermost feelings to strangers.” And by doing so, we and they become less strange to one another. 

In 1992, a survey of participation in the arts determined that 17% of North Americans had read a work of poetry at least once in the past year; 20 years later that number was 6.7%–less than half. The conclusion at the time that poetry was “dead” was borne out by studies that determined poetry ranked lower than knitting as an activity people participated in, beating out only opera.

By 2016, something had shifted: poetry was evidently not dead, but alive, well and growing.  According to a publishing industry annual sales report, the number of print poetry books sold in Canada in 2013 increased 5% over the previous year, another 8% in 2014 and 10% more in 2015. Incremental growth, but modest. In 2016, poetry sales grew a whopping 79% over the previous year–the largest jump of any subject category–and the most recent data indicates poetry sales were up another 116% between 2016 and 2017.

What happened? For starters, 2014 saw the publication of milk and honey by Rupi Kaur, a young (b.1992)  Indian-Canadian poet/writer/illustrator/performer who followed up her debut book with a second in 2017 entitled The Sun and Her Flowers. Both of these wildly popular books comprise poetry, prose and illustrations hand-drawn by Kaur and others to help readers associate an image with each poem. So how popular is popular in the publishing world?  Sales of both books have surpassed the 5 million mark and milk and honey spent 77 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. 

And it’s not just Kaur. Either we’ve changed our attitudes about poetry or poetry has changed. The answer is probably a bit of both. In a recent on-air interview with John Eaton, morning host of The Peak’s Talk of the Town, I shared my opinion that popular modern poetry was helped enormously by rap music, an art form in which the words take precedence over the tune.  The connection is clearer when you look at the stunning collection The Rose that Grew From Concrete published posthumously by the manager of rap artist (and poet) Tupac Shakur. Thanks to artists like Tupac, we have become accustomed to hearing the spoken word standing on its own without any need of melody.

In addition to our changing perceptions, the topics explored in Canadian poetry have also expanded. In in a special last month to the Globe and Mail, journalist Russell Smith describes “Canadian poetry’s unlikely renaissance.” He notes the “fading of a certain kind of weepy folksiness” in contemporary Canadian poetry,  the prize-winning poems of yesteryear which “tended to be about aurora borealis and the great noble sorrow of being descended from rugged settlers” supplanted by poems “flirt with the nonsensical” in poetry that walks a fine line between the lyrical and the experimental. 

Carmine Starnino, a Montreal editor who hosts a blog for Vehicule Press concurs, arguing that Canadian poetry has entered what he calls a "steampunk zone." He comments that today’s poems of note are “neither formally avant-garde nor nostalgic” but vibrant and intricate. Combine this with the accessibility afforded by the Internet and you have conditions that Smith describe as making it “easier to read and share poems now, and people are actually doing it.”

Canadians are not only buying and reading more poetry, they’re also writing and publishing it in greater quantities with 25% more poetry titles in 2017 than the year before. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have a bestselling poet in our midst, but Kaur’s books didn’t start something–they are part of something that was already happening. What’s notable about the upsurge and growth of poetry’s popularity is a renaissance of to poetry in younger generations. A phenomenon that may account for this greater comfort with poetry: while we may live in a visual and auditory age with images and sounds blasting us from all sides, if you want to communicate with a millennial, you better learn to text! Suddenly, the written word is “in” again.

Even so, poetry is not always easy. Reading and writing poetry requires thought, feeling and attention, and we might assume that it’s “not for us” if we don’t “get it” right away. But poetry cares less about being “understood” than noticed, contemplated, savoured and shared. And it’s a form that is very helpful in navigating an increasingly distracted world. Lesley Fletcher of the League of Canadian Poets notes, “Right now, one of its great benefits is that (poetry) gives us a kind of stillness among so much noise and bombardment of aggressive rhetoric.”  Unlike a short story or novel, poems demand that we slow down and patiently reach across the gap between our perspective and someone else’s experience. When we take the time to do this, poetry provides, as Fletcher says, a “kind of stillness hard to find now.”

So here we are in 2018, when, as Smith ironically observes, “the likelihood of a Canadian starting the day by reading a poem is greater now than it has been since about 1890.” If you’d like to get in on this growing trend, check out our resources section and learn how you can sign up to get a poem emailed to you each day and take a look at some of the poems by Collingwood poets posted in Poetry Corner. Long live poetry!

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The Griffin Poetry Prize – the world’s largest ($75,000) prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in English– is awarded each year to one international and one Canadian poet to “spark the public’s imagination and raise awareness of the crucial role poetry plays in our cultural life.”

Here are the nominees for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize with a line from each poet; who would you pick as the winner in each category?

International Griffin Prize
Tongo Eisen-Martin for Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights): “I guess we’re all city people now / And we roam around carving ‘still alive’ in people’s foreheads / (preaching gently)” 

Susan Howe for Debths (New Directions): “A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s / nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear.” 
Layli Long Soldier for Whereas (Graywolf Press): “But / is the small way to begin. // But I could not. // As I am limited to a few / words at command, such as wanblí. This / was how I wanted to begin, with the little / I know. // But could not.”

Natalie Shapero for Hard Child (Copper Canyon Press): “I don’t want any more of what I have. / I don’t want another spider plant. I don’t // want another lover.”

Canadian Griffin Prize
Billy-Ray Belcourt for This Wound Is a World (Frontenac House): “grieve is the name I give to myself / I carve it into the bed frame. / I am make-believe. / this is an archive. / it hurts to be a story.”

Aisha Sasha John for I have to live. (McClelland & Stewart): “I do. / I did it. / I did. / I had to. / I have to. / I have to live.”
Donato Mancini for Same Diff (Talonbooks): “Freedom is the freedom to choose. / Freedom is a right. / The cage is already open; you only have to walk out.”

Written and recited at the Mayor's Levee, January 5, 2020

20/20 Vision

Even before the turn of the year, the phrase “20/20 vision” emerged as

both a descriptor and goal for the new decade.

But despite what we may have believed,

turns out there’s no such thing as “perfect” vision.

Does this mean we should jettison the meme

for another, like “The Roaring ’20s”?

Probably not, as that decade a century ago was marked by

boom times followed by the bigger boom of global markets going bust.

So what else can we do with these omnipresent integers?

How do we make meaning of this 2020 year thrust upon us?

For humans, our 20’s are a time when we reach

adulthood, if not maturity.

In science, 20 is

the atomic number of calcium,

the third magic number in physics,

how many amino acids are encoded by the standard genetic code.

In sports, 20 is

            the maximum field of horses in the Kentucky Derby,

            the number of legal starting moves for each chess player,

how many questions you get in the guessing game.

Back in the day before cell phones,

“Hey Good Buddy–what’s your 20?” rang across the CB airwaves

as trucks drivers and other road warriors

shared the location of the cheapest gas or the best pie,

warned each other of potential dangers,

kept each other company on long-haul drives.

From coast to coast to coast, that one question encompassed

Where are you now?

Where are you headed?

 What’s going on where you are?

Are you OK?

Rather than striving for the impossible goal of perfect vision,

perhaps our first act of the decade should be to check in with one another,

leaving the arrogant certainty of the teens for a more measured approach  

Finding the strength all the way down in our bones to

to step forward into the unknown with purpose tempered with humility

to recognize that the only magic numbers are those that include all of us

to admit the need for connection and community embedded deep in our genetic code.

We are not in a horserace in which there can only be one winner.

We get more than twenty moves or twenty questions.

We are traveling this road together and more then ever

We need each other.

So rather than presenting a vision as a fait accompli

Let us enter into dialog with each other to seek the answers to the important questions:

Where are you now?

Where are you headed?

 What’s going on where you are?

Are you OK?

 Hey Good Buddy-what’s your 20 for 2020?

The Quilt of Turtle Island

This quilt has been a long time in the making. 
At its centre, its core is an ancient turtle,
rising up from the earth, still bearing dirt and plants on its back.

Woven around the turtle are patches of deerskin, pierced with porcupine quills 
and decorated with slivers of mica so fine they look like tiny rainbows. 
Next come the trees–the 7 Grandfathers ringing the turtle along with the 7 Grandmothers, the ancient animals that still call this place home.

Surrounding the skins is a border of hemp, rough-cut rope worn smooth 
by hands hauling it over the sides of ships, now looped into a frame. 
Shards of cotton, linen, muslin–softened by time and wear punctuated by 
embroidery thread with names and words cross-stitched for practice and memory. 

Now the circle grows, encased by tightly woven grain bags speared by hand-forged iron nails, bent into pleasing shapes with hens and chicks scampering around the edges.  Next, a loose border of maple leaves rampant on a field of red and white, poppies bowing their heads, trilliums of all shades. 

And more: pieces of rich silk from saris conjoined with Dickey overalls, the collar of a golf shirt rimming a Loonie like the flute of a white flower guarding its precious core. 
At the outermost part, not a finished edge but a fringe, ready to add more as the quilt continues to grow over time.

This is our quilt; there are others all over the country–
our native or chosen land. 
Each unique to the people and places that have informed its story.
Each the same as one section of a larger quilt that connects sea to sea to sea.

This enormous quilt is so beautiful and various and new that it shines like the beacon of a lighthouse, shimmers like the northern lights, glows like a city on a hill or in a vale, 
a mosaic big enough to cover us all in this our home–Canada. 

During the month of April, Poetry Kits were placed at the Collingwood Museum and Centennial Aquatic Centre. A spontaneous poetry wall was also created at Central Park Arena with note paper and pens on hand for those ready and willing to play with words! Here are a few of the submissions:

New in Town

I have found this trail on a city map
along White’s Bay leading to  an isle
called Hens and Chickens – a farm,
succulents?  I am about to discover,
 hoping for green, a glimpse of spring.

Pieces of ice break off with a crack,
Meld with the water, liquid at once.
Redwing blackbirds cling to branches,
screeching, proclaim  their  territory.
Wings of geese whistle overhead.
Mergansers bustle to and fro.
Willow catkins and moss by my feet,
 velvety pillows greeting. All around 
celebration, spring is here.

Abruptly, the path to the island ends.
A footbridge has been taken out 
by ice and winter storms. Over there,
I see some mounds, homes of muskrats.
Water birds weave through the marshes.

A swan detaches from yellow grasses,
head held high, white wings pristine,
he floats through the gap a few paces 
from me. He doesn’t care that I am there,  
so sure of his domain.

-Ella Pankatz

Returning

Surrounded by succulent sweet crab apple blossoms

dripping in the wind, the ground a pink carpet, creeping flocks,  

red yellow tulips alive and dead, deep purple iris,

a wicker chaise lounge cushioned  comfort,

filled with memories,  fields of wheat undulating,

unfamiliar beauty, wildflowers,

climbing  above constant change.

The Bay calls me, the heat,

invites perhaps demands,   jump,

like cool mountain streams at the end or middle

of those days welcomed toes and feet

filled with  bygone knowledge,

Roman,  medieval,  visible ruins.

I walk now on land,  remembering, that

where  I walk…”Indian children used to play…”

called to be aware to notice, history here.

 “ Jesus carried his burdens,”  he said

she replied “  I am not Jesus, and he was not sixty.” 

Yesterday, after the vegetable beds, were mulched, 

and seeds were planted,  the labyrinth was mowed and

dainty blues forget me nots were placed in vases, 

I watched rain fall, glee filled,

holding knowledge of thunderstorms,

in the valley, on distant mountain ranges, 

rain covers over packs,  swelling stick clicks on earth,

petitioning for five  more kilometres of grace.

You wave as you go by,  “ welcome home,’ 

familiar comfort on your face.

I met him, for the first time at the airport,

heading to St.  Jean,  three meetings later, he fell

into my arms,  a mountain climbed, descent accomplished,

we lost each other on day five.

She gave me my wedding album, forty three years ago,

I was nineteen,    so young and wise,  

now changed.

Forty countries more or less 

                            gifted me

with wisdom

                  from their citizens.

my pack sits empty on the floor,  

not put away,

not yet. 

• gloria kropf nafziger

The world is angry, spitting fire and ash.

How many eruptions must it create?

Where must it next open earth and roar?

It’s had enough of our senseless squabbles.

Its threat is real, we should abide, revere its mighty roar,

fear its inevitable outcome, desist our squabbles.

One potentate after another trying to fight – not play.

To destroy – not create.

To pollute our destiny with destructive toys.

Cease and Desist!

We have what we’ve been given the use of –

not the right to

destroy each other,

tower over,

defeat

mankind and its companion species,

inhabitants of this great blue sphere

we all call home.

-Faye Austin

The boy is gone; he’s launched
and left a gaping space
wet towels, drums and reeking rugby shirts
used to fill.
It’s too quiet now; the sparkle’s gone.
Gabe shared his joys and passions easily;
kept his sorrows and fears for his friends.
No more, “Hi Mom!” though truth be told,
we’d heard it less of late.
Now sometimes over skype,
him sprawled on his dorm bed,
I’ll say, “So, how was your day?”
watch him stroke his beard and calculate
what he’s willing to share (while
admiring himself in the camera).
Just a few weeks gone and he’s already
pitched a ticket home to catch
Viking Metal in TO. (oh ya,
and dad’s birthday too, I guess).
He’s already jamming at a friend’s,
prepping for open mike,
fishing in Ste. Mary’s River
and shaving with his KA BAR knife
by the campfire.
Yes, he’s launched.
I’m happy he’s so full of his own life now,
but I also wish he were still six,
and I were still the apple of his world:
As he will always be of mine.
 
Val Losell

I delight in weather

I flow in the passage of weathers

I don’t wield umbrellas to ward off the rain
or deflect the brilliance of solar light and heat

I don’t live buffeted by the chaotic imagined vagaries of weathers
I revel in the stillnesses and breezes and buffets of true air flows

I don’t moan about the dim and damp of wet summers
I search for secrets and treasures in the shadowed picnics of the dark

I don’t shiver in the midst of winter blizzards, yearning for spring greening
I sing lullabies to sleeping embryos and cuddle the icebergs of silence

I delight in weather

I don’t plant cultivated gardens or water weedless lawns
I write symphonies for wildflowers and float blinded by oceans of dandelions

I don’t gasp in panic with summers passing and the turning, falling of leaves
I dance in harmony with the penultimate colours drifting to their birthing graves

I don’t listen to the manic meteorological dramatizations of media prophets
I watch cloud patterns, leaves and cows and open my nostrils to shifting scents

I don’t get worked up by weather
I flow with it
I delight in it
I’m grateful for weather … of any kind … on any day
affirming every moment …
I’m alive.

© Jake McArthur 2009 

Exasperated with the whines and complaints and sighs from people reacting to a summer of more than average rain; the emotional pot-stirring of media around weather forecasts and the endless cycles of complaining about the cold in winter, the heat and humidity in summer and the wishing for something else than what is. Stop … feel blessed!

And then the tide recoiled
when the urge to grow 
wealthy as an ocean
was more futile than 
the strength it took 
to float.

-R.C.

Here are four of the poems generated at our recent Playing With Words poetry “playshop”. These poems were created on the spot using a “prompt” or starting point called Poetry Jam, which is a way to concoct a poem based on three nouns. If you’d like to try it yourself, pick any three nouns (person/place/thing), ask someone else to assign you three or use this handy on-line Random Noun Generator to produce three nouns for you to use:  http://www.desiquintans.com/randomnoun. The prompts used for each poem are in bold.

Strangers always seem to find me.

This one’s heart glitters like gold, it’s blinding.

Only with another soul do I expand my view.

-Rick H.

I hear a voice,

quite clear and direct.

I am in the church.

It comes from under

the frontal arch

and speaks of death.

I stand to run away

but decide to stay

and wait for it

to speak of life.

-Eric B.

I walked the streets of downtown,

trying to make sense of the homeless souls

I saw living and dying on the sidewalk.

It wasn’t until I listened to the yarn

of a desperate grandfather

that I realized, anyone’s life can go

off the rails

and I could be him

instead of who I think I am.

-Ruth H.

Long awaited retirement.

I pin my hopes on my future,

my plans, dreams, adventures.

But here I am in hospital.

Life has stalled, every day the same.

Dreams fade and change.

A visitor comes by my window

with feathers ruffled from a

journey of wind and weather.

He sings his birdsong.

Hope is renewed, a new song.

I will rise and fly once again.

-Nancy L.