Tom Cull will be a featured poet at London Open Mic Poetry Night’s special April 24th event in celebration of National Poetry Month. He will read along with celebrated Canadian poet Frank Davey, followed by an open mic, at Landon Library in London’s Wortley Village, beginning at 6:30.
Tom Cull was born and raised in rural Southwestern Ontario. He is on the board of Poetry London and is a co-facilitator of their poetry workshop. Tom holds a PhD in English Literature from York University and is an adjunct professor at the Centre for American Studies at Western University. Tom
Tom Cull was born and raised in rural Southwestern Ontario. He is on the board of Poetry London and is a co-facilitator of their poetry workshop. Tom holds a PhD in English Literature from York University and is an adjunct professor at the Centre for American Studies at Western University. Tom
created and runs Thames River Rally, a volunteer group that meets monthly to clean up garbage in and along the Thames River. His first book of poetry, What the Badger Said, will be published by Baseline Press in September 2013.
From our interview with Tom Cull:
“As to why I started writing, I think it had to do primarily with reading and studying poetry for most of my adult life. At first I believed that I was primarily an academic--that my strength lay in criticism and analysis; however, as I've steadily given more time to writing poetry, I've begun to see how producing work and analyzing work are fed by the same creative well-spring. I guess the other reason I started writing was that I wanted to say some things. Life has some pretty sharp edges and dark corners. I've always appreciated the way poetry traverses those spaces.”
“...But as I got some space from the study of poetry (my academic focus moved towards prose), I felt less beholden or responsible to the tradition of great poetry. I realized that I just needed to write because I enjoyed writing. And that I should start sharing my work to see how others might react to it.
Cull says a big influence on his poetry was his move to London, Ontario, “where, as you know, there is a rich, vibrant and supportive poetry community. As much as I'm influenced by my academic history, I think I'm even more influenced and inspired by the poets who read for the Open Mic Night and Poetry London readings series, not to mention all the people in this city who are writing, reading, editing, organizing and publishing. Since moving to London, I've run workshops, taken workshops, judged numerous poetry contests, met great poets from London and beyond, and taken part in all sorts of poetry events. This has been crucial to my development, and a whole lot of fun.”
1. PARROTING
The yellow-chevroned parakeets of Los Angeles are not indigenous. Like the palm trees in which they roost, they are green cards in that Emerald City. I look up as I walk by the tattoo parlours on Hollywood Blvd. Way, way up in the trees. They do not come down.
Unlike the mocking birds who compete with me for ripe figs in the back yard and who together mob the Bullock’s Oriole, the parakeets keep their distance. Born wild from escaped ancestors—I like to think they have wise avian memories encoded in their bird brains.
And because I, too, am alien here, I like to think that these flocks of parakeets keep watch for brethren who, caught in nets in Honduras and Peru, sit in cages beside TVs, biding their time for an open window. Your family is here, your place is here. On the ceiling of this vast and strange city. Welcome Home.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
2. CREPUSCULAR
The boy regards his mother,
awkward in two feet of water,
all elbows and knees.
But he can touch and feels secure.
(Later, they will lower the bottom of the pool
and the scuba club will practice
with tanks and long black flippers.)
My mother’s not a fish, he thinks.
His father is not there.
He is in the shop—he runs his fingers
through the band-saw, one by one,
to promote the growth of webbing,
or so he hopes.
But only claws and feathers grow
under his yellowing eyes.
The beavers in the bush
have been preparing all winter.
The banks of the river--
a bed of poplar saplings
sharpened to points. They will lure him there
with the promise of their tail
and it will end.
Back in the pool, the boy
puts his small hand on the flutter board
in the shape of a ray.
His mother beckons,
she is thin as a rail
but has eyes on the top of her head.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
3. CHOOSING THE ANIMAL LAUREATE (If you read this earlier, it was missing five stanzas near the end. Try the corrected version.)
The Manatee is smug.
Standing at the lectern, book in flipper,
“Is it hot in here or just me?” he asks,
turning nonchalantly to hang his suit jacket on the chair,
revealing as he does the propeller-shaped scar that runs
the length of his back. Please.
Panda refuses. She cannot bear it--
reading to a room of jaw-clenched heavy petters
snapping photos for Facebook updates,
voices in their cute-addled brains screaming,
“Widdle furry buddy is weading a poem. Yes she is.
YES. she. IS!”
The Blue Whales sent a wire. “All is lost” stop.
“In translation” stop. “Including this” stop.
The Donkeys renewed with Babstock.
Foxes? Signed with Hughes.
The Fish are mired in modernism.
House Cats are busy with the internet.
The Squirrel—too anecdotal.
Rabbit claims he is “post rabbit.”
Skunk—too confessional.
The Hummingbird is a drunk.
Corporate Cattle are doping,
Organic Cattle are dying of happiness.
Apes can’t get funding.
I won’t tell you what the Badger said.
(He said, “Go fuck yourself.”)
My good people,
it is the West African Lion we want--
the one from the Zanesville Zoo
who, along with
seventeen fellow Lions,
two Grey Wolves,
six Black Bears,
two Grizzly Bears,
one Baboon,
three Mountain Lions,
and eighteen Bengal Tigers,
was hunted down and killed
by Ohio state police after the zoo-keep
freed his animals from their cages, this
just moments before he chose a gun
from his other prized collection
and shot himself dead.
Flown in from the Columbus Zoo,
Jack Hanna reported,
“It’s like Noah’s ark wrecking right here
in Zanesville, Ohio.”
Our Lion laureate was the only animal
they tried to tranquilize.
He faltered momentarily as the drugs
hit home, but rallied and charged the vet
as bullets cut through his pelt.
Imagine him now, where I stand,
wearing Ray-Ban aviators,
picking his teeth with a sheriff’s badge.
“Call me Mustafa,” he says with a straight face.
He reads a villanelle, a few quiet haikus.
Taking questions about his poetic influences,
he quotes Breton— “The purest surrealist act
is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun
and firing into it randomly.”
And Artaud—“Without an element of cruelty
at the root of every spectacle,
the theater is not possible.
In our present state of degeneration,
it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made
to re-enter our minds.”
He cites the Dada manifesto--
“I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels
quite simply occur, as a cat meows …”
“I’m afraid our time is almost up,” he says,
his r’s beginning to roll, soft and deep.
“Before you go I’ll share a sound
poem I’ve been working on.”
He treads quietly to the back of the room.
“It’s called, Feeding Time at the Zoo.
A collaborative poem,” he says
as he bolts the door,
turning.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
4. DAYS WITHOUT PAIN
(for Betty Ann Lamport).
If there are days without pain
before the joints disarticulate
and fall off the bone,
I’ll take them all.
If there are days without pain
especially in the sun, by a river
with my lover, in a throng,
I’ll take them all.
When there are days without pain
we will not recognize each other
until that first spring thunderstorm
breaks over our backbones.
When there are days without pain--
without child-proof bottles without hidden complaints
without shame, without longing, envy, anger
recriminations, tears that pop with
eye snapping frustration--
When there are days without pain I will,
like my mother, stare out a window and finally
and deliberately
take a deep breath in,
and then,
out.
© Tom Cull
5. THE TWIST YOU CAN’T RESIST
A handful of red licorice
akimbo in your hands
like fibre optic
umbilical cords.
You hold them out to me
smiling, “try one.”
Hidden in your other fist
I cannot see that small
white cusped chunk,
stuck with red
gummy, that was your
filling.
This is love,
perio
after all.
© Tom Cull
INTERVIEW WITH TOM CULL
From our interview with Tom Cull:
“As to why I started writing, I think it had to do primarily with reading and studying poetry for most of my adult life. At first I believed that I was primarily an academic--that my strength lay in criticism and analysis; however, as I've steadily given more time to writing poetry, I've begun to see how producing work and analyzing work are fed by the same creative well-spring. I guess the other reason I started writing was that I wanted to say some things. Life has some pretty sharp edges and dark corners. I've always appreciated the way poetry traverses those spaces.”
“...But as I got some space from the study of poetry (my academic focus moved towards prose), I felt less beholden or responsible to the tradition of great poetry. I realized that I just needed to write because I enjoyed writing. And that I should start sharing my work to see how others might react to it.
Cull says a big influence on his poetry was his move to London, Ontario, “where, as you know, there is a rich, vibrant and supportive poetry community. As much as I'm influenced by my academic history, I think I'm even more influenced and inspired by the poets who read for the Open Mic Night and Poetry London readings series, not to mention all the people in this city who are writing, reading, editing, organizing and publishing. Since moving to London, I've run workshops, taken workshops, judged numerous poetry contests, met great poets from London and beyond, and taken part in all sorts of poetry events. This has been crucial to my development, and a whole lot of fun.”
1. PARROTING
The yellow-chevroned parakeets of Los Angeles are not indigenous. Like the palm trees in which they roost, they are green cards in that Emerald City. I look up as I walk by the tattoo parlours on Hollywood Blvd. Way, way up in the trees. They do not come down.
Unlike the mocking birds who compete with me for ripe figs in the back yard and who together mob the Bullock’s Oriole, the parakeets keep their distance. Born wild from escaped ancestors—I like to think they have wise avian memories encoded in their bird brains.
And because I, too, am alien here, I like to think that these flocks of parakeets keep watch for brethren who, caught in nets in Honduras and Peru, sit in cages beside TVs, biding their time for an open window. Your family is here, your place is here. On the ceiling of this vast and strange city. Welcome Home.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
2. CREPUSCULAR
The boy regards his mother,
awkward in two feet of water,
all elbows and knees.
But he can touch and feels secure.
(Later, they will lower the bottom of the pool
and the scuba club will practice
with tanks and long black flippers.)
My mother’s not a fish, he thinks.
His father is not there.
He is in the shop—he runs his fingers
through the band-saw, one by one,
to promote the growth of webbing,
or so he hopes.
But only claws and feathers grow
under his yellowing eyes.
The beavers in the bush
have been preparing all winter.
The banks of the river--
a bed of poplar saplings
sharpened to points. They will lure him there
with the promise of their tail
and it will end.
Back in the pool, the boy
puts his small hand on the flutter board
in the shape of a ray.
His mother beckons,
she is thin as a rail
but has eyes on the top of her head.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
3. CHOOSING THE ANIMAL LAUREATE (If you read this earlier, it was missing five stanzas near the end. Try the corrected version.)
The Manatee is smug.
Standing at the lectern, book in flipper,
“Is it hot in here or just me?” he asks,
turning nonchalantly to hang his suit jacket on the chair,
revealing as he does the propeller-shaped scar that runs
the length of his back. Please.
Panda refuses. She cannot bear it--
reading to a room of jaw-clenched heavy petters
snapping photos for Facebook updates,
voices in their cute-addled brains screaming,
“Widdle furry buddy is weading a poem. Yes she is.
YES. she. IS!”
The Blue Whales sent a wire. “All is lost” stop.
“In translation” stop. “Including this” stop.
The Donkeys renewed with Babstock.
Foxes? Signed with Hughes.
The Fish are mired in modernism.
House Cats are busy with the internet.
The Squirrel—too anecdotal.
Rabbit claims he is “post rabbit.”
Skunk—too confessional.
The Hummingbird is a drunk.
Corporate Cattle are doping,
Organic Cattle are dying of happiness.
Apes can’t get funding.
I won’t tell you what the Badger said.
(He said, “Go fuck yourself.”)
My good people,
it is the West African Lion we want--
the one from the Zanesville Zoo
who, along with
seventeen fellow Lions,
two Grey Wolves,
six Black Bears,
two Grizzly Bears,
one Baboon,
three Mountain Lions,
and eighteen Bengal Tigers,
was hunted down and killed
by Ohio state police after the zoo-keep
freed his animals from their cages, this
just moments before he chose a gun
from his other prized collection
and shot himself dead.
Flown in from the Columbus Zoo,
Jack Hanna reported,
“It’s like Noah’s ark wrecking right here
in Zanesville, Ohio.”
Our Lion laureate was the only animal
they tried to tranquilize.
He faltered momentarily as the drugs
hit home, but rallied and charged the vet
as bullets cut through his pelt.
Imagine him now, where I stand,
wearing Ray-Ban aviators,
picking his teeth with a sheriff’s badge.
“Call me Mustafa,” he says with a straight face.
He reads a villanelle, a few quiet haikus.
Taking questions about his poetic influences,
he quotes Breton— “The purest surrealist act
is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun
and firing into it randomly.”
And Artaud—“Without an element of cruelty
at the root of every spectacle,
the theater is not possible.
In our present state of degeneration,
it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made
to re-enter our minds.”
He cites the Dada manifesto--
“I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels
quite simply occur, as a cat meows …”
“I’m afraid our time is almost up,” he says,
his r’s beginning to roll, soft and deep.
“Before you go I’ll share a sound
poem I’ve been working on.”
He treads quietly to the back of the room.
“It’s called, Feeding Time at the Zoo.
A collaborative poem,” he says
as he bolts the door,
turning.
© Tom Cull
What the Badger Said, Baseline Press, 2013
4. DAYS WITHOUT PAIN
(for Betty Ann Lamport).
If there are days without pain
before the joints disarticulate
and fall off the bone,
I’ll take them all.
If there are days without pain
especially in the sun, by a river
with my lover, in a throng,
I’ll take them all.
When there are days without pain
we will not recognize each other
until that first spring thunderstorm
breaks over our backbones.
When there are days without pain--
without child-proof bottles without hidden complaints
without shame, without longing, envy, anger
recriminations, tears that pop with
eye snapping frustration--
When there are days without pain I will,
like my mother, stare out a window and finally
and deliberately
take a deep breath in,
and then,
out.
© Tom Cull
5. THE TWIST YOU CAN’T RESIST
A handful of red licorice
akimbo in your hands
like fibre optic
umbilical cords.
You hold them out to me
smiling, “try one.”
Hidden in your other fist
I cannot see that small
white cusped chunk,
stuck with red
gummy, that was your
filling.
This is love,
perio
after all.
© Tom Cull
INTERVIEW WITH TOM CULL
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