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Debbie Okun Hill, Featured Poet for Open Mic, Dec. 3: Interview and 4 Poems

11/21/2014

1 Comment

 
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Debbie Okun Hill confesses that she once went to a Halloween party dressed as a bookworm so she could sit in a corner and read.

“Call me an introvert with a thirst for knowledge. For the first five years of my life, I lived on the prairies in a three-room house with no running water or working toilet. That serene life (books, words, open rural spaces and unscheduled play) is something I still treasure. My interest in poetry developed much later.”

What started as a writing career in print journalism and public relations in her twenties and thirties has evolved into a poetic journey spanning over the last eleven years.

Today, she is a professional poet currently on tour with Tarnished Trophies (Black Moss Press, 2014) her first full collection of poetry by a trade publisher. She is the Past President of The Ontario Poetry Society, a Member of The League of Canadian Poets, The Writers Union of Canada, Sarnia’s AfterHours Poets and the recipient of two Writers’ Reserve grants from the Ontario Arts Council. She loves promoting the work of other writers and for eight years she has been a co-host of a monthly open mic event in southwestern Ontario.

To date, over 290 of her poems have been published in over 110 different publications/websites including the Literary Review of Canada, Descant, Existere, Vallum, The Windsor Review, and Other Voices in Canada plus Mobius, The Binnacle, Thema, and Still Point Arts Quarterly in the United States. She has read her work throughout Ontario including the Fringe Stage of the 2011 Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and during the 2012 PoeTrain Express/Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Cobalt. Several of her poems have won awards.

In addition to her Black Moss Press book, she has two chapbooks published by Beret Days Press and is part of EnCompass I, a 75-page anthology featuring the work of five Canadian poets. Between touring, she hopes to polish two new manuscripts. Next spring she will be editing Mindshadows, a 2015 membership anthology for The Ontario Poetry Society.

Follow her website/blog Kites Without Strings  and on twitter @OkunHill.

Four Poems by Debbie Okun Hill 

On the Way to the Cottage

You see them stranded
aborted trailers
male metal apron strings
cut from a father’s fist
the ball and chain
used to drag them
his aluminum baggage of
material status
his sail boat
tall towering
his motorcycle
quick spin of tires
his motor home
barely out of the box
 
Heavy burden of debt
no match for tiny tires
broken axle succumbed
to extra weight
fallen merchandise
now littering gravel roads

 (First published in POEMATA, Volume 25, Number 01  The Canadian Poetry Association, 2010 ISSN 1920-8847 (PDF)
(Reprinted in Tarnished Trophies, Black Moss Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-088753-528-4 (pbk)

Spilling Warm Lemonade

I remember sinking
soft slow slide
deep in summer’s
webbed chair
the way it cushioned
made crisscross imprints
on the back of my thighs
my legs dangling
toes slipping in
cool pool water
your blank stare
distorting your reflection
 
You were angry that day
spilling your warm lemonade
not saying a word
kicking your thoughts
against wooden fence
hot sun blanketing
blistering your shoulders
the blue faces of
forget-me-nots
shriveled and curled brown

You had forgotten
your favorite sport
the way you swam laps
first your breast stroke
the steady up and down rhythm
your twisted turn, then
a smooth glide off pool wall
your fluttering fin feet
against nature’s current
 
Instead you kept asking
about your lemonade
as your memories spilled
sticky and thick
like a fog over your empty deck.
 
(First published in Tarnished Trophies, Black Moss Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-088753-528-4 (pbk)
(Reprinted on http://www.leafpress.ca/Mondays_Poems_2014/Debbie-Okun-Hill/Spilling-Warm-Lemonade.htm (Leaf Press Monday’s Poem link) Leaf Press Website September 7 to 14, 2014 then archived on site)
(Broadcast on http://findingavoiceoncfrcfm.wordpress.com October 31, 2014 4 to 5 p.m. (40:00 to 42:00) Recorded at October 7, 2014 ‘Poetry at the Artel’ Open Mic Reading Series in Kingston, Ontario).


Train Station
 
Standing alone, near wooden post
ostracized from adult crowd
young male teen
fidgets, kicks a pebble
outside rural train station
loose gravel crunching
beneath his feet
hot sun searing his cheeks
quick snap-pop, click of teeth
his tongue twirling
juicy piece of bubble gum
grape flavour released
ball cap turned backwards
skateboard shoes untied

In this afternoon game of waiting
he loses valuable playtime
like rolling childhood marbles
on his stepfather’s whittle wasting hours
wood-chipped seconds suspended

locomotion      slow
 
each yellow dandelion
turning grey between thin cracks
slight breeze unraveling
unnourished seeds of his mind
wandering, blown away
when no one picks him up
leaves him feeling small
reminiscent of his days
hiding as an abused toddler
curled beneath a bench
coiled, thick wad, stale
like his gum—stuck
with no place to go

(First published with the title “ Stuck at the Train Station” on  http://badpoetsclub.blogspot.com/ Bad Poets Club Blog Website Thursday, July 22, 2010)
Reprinted  in Tarnished Trophies, Black Moss Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-088753-528-4 (pbk)
(Broadcast on http://findingavoiceoncfrcfm.wordpress.com October 31, 2014 4 to 5 p.m. (42:00 to 43:30) Recorded at October 7, 2014 ‘Poetry at the Artel’ Open Mic Reading Series in Kingston, Ontario).


The Finish Line

So those who are last will be first,
and those who are first will be last.

                                   --Matthew 20:16

In this obstacle race, steeplechase with horses
she cannot run from the black stallion
his flaring nostrils, a clutch of death
upheld by his team of immortal jockeys
they are buried in the ash
at the base of the church steeple
his hoof prints, their haunting voices
rising like waves, surfing behind her
chasing her like vicious sundogs
nipping at her ankles

Turn this way, turn that way
she tries to escape, to lose them
to hide in her whirling cloud dust
 
Each hour, she runs through her daily life
attempting to create a better world
where Olympic torches lead athletes
away from gutters and ditches
dark bowling over lanes
unsafe alleyways

Confused, she pauses, catches her breath
as if the phoenix feather
the wings of Pegasus she carries
can survive, can stay preserved
in the cup of her hands
these rewards of winning
in becoming first, in pushing forward
over the rapids, across the deep valley
how quick will they lead her
to death’s finish line?
 
She hears the hoof prints, she teeters on the edge
this is a race, a line she refuses to cross

(Published in Tarnished Trophies, Black Moss Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-088753-528-4 (pbk)
(Broadcast on http://findingavoiceoncfrcfm.wordpress.com October 31, 2014 4 to 5 p.m. (43:30 to 46:30) Recorded at October 7, 2014 ‘Poetry at the Artel’ Open Mic Reading Series in Kingston, Ontario


Interview with Debbie
(Interview by Kevin Heslop for London Open Mic Poetry Night)

H:
 On the homepage of your website, Kites Without Strings, your make reference to Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. What does the phrase mean to you, and what compelled you to take “that road less travelled”?
 
O.H: For me, life is more about the journey than the destination. We can set goals and work hard towards them, but often along the way we encounter a fork in the road which forces us to rethink our original plans. In his poem “The Road Not Taken”, Frost writes about “Two roads diverged in a wood” but if you extrapolate this idea, and think outside the box,  there are actually more than two paths a traveller can follow. For example, a person can turn right or left but an adventurous soul might sit on a stone fence, build a wood cabin and remain content with an inward journey without taking another physical step. Or she may forge a new route through the woods, dig a tunnel down to China or climb up a white pine tree and explore the skies. He might even go back home the way  he came. For me, those are the roads or options that are often forgotten. Too often we see the world in black and white when in reality it is filled with not only shades and light of grey but also a multitude of colour. Look close, a leaf isn’t just green but includes streaks of brown, yellow, red and blue. I believe highly creative individuals like artists, poets, philosophers, and musicians are better problem solvers because they are not afraid to explore those roads less travelled. As for what compelled me to embark on this poetic journey, I would have to say it started off as strong nudge by a local writers’ group. For decades I hated poetry and yet, for the last 11 years, I’ve been a full-time poet.  Today, I like to advocate: if you don’t like poetry, you just haven’t found the right poem yet.

H: The phrase “the love of creating word pictures”, referring to a writer’s journey, appears in “Starting Over”, first published by Sydenham Press in 2007. Would you identify yourself in relation to Imagism, or any particular school of poetics? What can a poem achieve, and how, with respect to ‘poem as succession of word pictures’, may it do so?

O.H: I hate labels such as “imagism”, “objectivism” or “surrealism”. At the same time,  I know university scholars like to analyze and study the movements of past and current poetics. I want my poems to be like kites without strings: not tied down to a particular school but free to fly in new, perhaps less travelled directions. During my teens, my obsession for reading lessened as I explored my interest in the visual arts. I would spend hours in front of a paint easel or a sketch pad. In my twenties, I worked in the public relations department of The Winnipeg Art Gallery so the importance of cultural and artistic expression stayed with me. For me, poetry is organic, just like art is organic. It is the channel through which the muse speaks. A poem’s achievement or lack of it should never be part of the equation. Remember, the reward is in the journey. Once a poem is published or read aloud, it takes on new meanings based on the reader’s or listener’s own experiences. Of course, not everyone will agree, nor will everyone like the same poetry. I like to think that my work is eclectic. Some ‘word pictures’ are clear like a traditional landscape painting but other images are fictionalized with talking objects or askew with surrealism like a Salvador Dali masterpiece.

H: In “Portrait of the Poet as Landscape”, A.M. Klein offers the lines:  

... Set apart,
he finds himself, with special haircut and dress,
as on a reservation. Introvert.
He does not understand this; sad conjecture
muscles and palls thrombotic on his heart.
 
If you’ll forgive Klein’s limited pronoun, how has introversion informed or shaped your writing and sense of self?

O.H: Wow, what a long and powerful poem! I wish I had time to fully explore the depth of meaning behind A. M. Klein’s work. I cannot speak for all introverts, and again I don’t like using labels, but for me, it’s easier to retain your sense of self when you have a strong support group behind you: people who love you unconditional despite all the failures. My mother is that loving person and cheerleader. My husband is my rock. I have several close friends who keep me grounded. It’s also easier to understand who you are when you are older than when you first leave home as a young adult. Yes, I’ve had to develop coping skills to deal with large parities or crowds. Yes, I’ve had to learn to be ‘out there’ when promoting a new book but I will always need that space to unwind and  to re-charge my batteries.
 
As for shaping my writing, introversion helped me to become a better listener (I ask lots of questions) and to watch for the non-verbal clues that can often go un-noticed. I am fascinated by people who live on the fringe, those individuals who dare to be different in a society that wants everyone to conform to a certain image. Because I am  happiest at my desk writing, reading, creating or spending time one-on-one with close friends and family, it is easy for me to pump out poems on a daily or nightly basis. Also it is during those quiet moments that it becomes easier to enter that mystical  ‘ZONE’ , tap into the muse or become aware of the spiritual thread running through our lives.
 
H: Your most recent book of poems, “Tarnished Trophies”, explores the sports world. Explore, if you will, the impetus for merging the ostensibly disjunctive worlds of poetry and sport.

O.H: Earlier, we chatted about the road less travelled. I neglected to mention that life sometimes throws you a fastball and knocks you off home plate. Marty Gervais and Black Moss Press did that for me. I had submitted a sample of sports poems for a submission call for The Windsor Review. The publisher liked them so much he called to ask if I had any more. At the time, I didn’t tell him that I was at a fork in the road: ready to quit poetry and to change my focus to either short stories or photography. Three long years later, Tarnished Trophies, my first trade book was released. As noted on the back cover: “Debbie Okun Hill leaps from the bleachers into the light and shadow of the sports world. Mixed with the poetic portraits of sweat..the thirst for first…and the juicy taste of orange victory are the metaphorical snapshots of tarnished men and women, the unrewarded failures, and the need to reflect. Tarnished Trophieswrestles the athletic soul: this essence of winning and losing, loving and changing, growing and shaping.”
 
Some readers may shy away from this athletic theme but I’m hoping others will take that chance to see how sports can be a metaphor for life where more traditional poetic themes such as competition, bullying, ageing and suicide are also addressed. The truth is that I see poetry in everything and everywhere. Last month, Lummox Press in California published a themed anthology on desire and roadkill. Yes, now, I even have a published  ‘roadkill’ poem inspired by Canadian artist Robert Bateman’s interpretation of a busy highway well-travelled by beavers.  The poetic journey continues.

H: It seems you’ve had something of a love/hate relationship with poetry: “For decades I hated poetry and yet, for the last 11 years, I’ve been a full time poet." Later, you mentioned you were “ready to quit poetry and change my focus...”. Which poems or poets urged you to write poetry in the first place, and which specific emotions, uses of language or resonances within those texts helped you recognize the theatre as your own?

O.H: My answer is complicated. May I include novelists and children’s games in my list? Consider wooden puzzles, blocks, Scrabble and in my adult years, the Rubik’s Cube, Word Seek games and the Jumble puzzle. My mind needs to be busy so I seek out mentors and friends who I can have deep and challenging conversations with. Agatha Christie fueled my love for a good mystery. In high school Margaret Atwood spoke to me through her books: The Edible Woman and Surfacing. From then on, I was hooked on symbolism. I even purchased A Dictionary of Symbols to deepen my writing. However, poetry was never a significant part of my life until I met Sarnia poet Peggy Fletcher in 2002. She was the one who told me I was a poet. Of course, I didn’t believe her. I wanted to write fiction but agreed to try poetry as a stepping stone towards my larger goal.  Then Bunny Iskov and  The Ontario Poetry Society provided me with poetic challenges and deadlines. Before I knew it I was on this poetic journey, a road that I never expected to be on. It’s been fun but difficult at the same time. You need to have a tough skin to handle all the rejections from publishers and people who think writing poetry should be a hobby versus a worthwhile career.
 
H: “On the Way to the Cottage” renders the abandonment of male status icons; the sailboat, the motorcycle, the trailer, all reduced to “litter”. How and to what degree do you see the hollowness of ‘really existing capitalism’ and this patriarchic society as fused, limbs of the same animal? 
 
O.H: Another tough question. What I want this poem and the poems in my book to do is to stir up a conversation about all competition, not just in the sports arena or amongst a specific gender. It’s easy to point fingers at Capitalism and a patriarchal society but the world is more complex than that. When you’ve been raised in a traditional family in an impoverished area, you see the importance of the team where neighbors and friends must work together to help each other survive. However, after living in a more prosperous province, I see how greed, the ‘thirst for first’ and the worship of materialistic goods can be detrimental to the well-being of others. I’m also old enough to see the paradigm shift where not only men but women are becoming more aggressive and self-absorbed in their own importance. Is this good? You tell me. I see many rich but very unhappy people.
 
H: You mentioned being inclined towards short story writing in the early stages of what would become “Tarnished Trophies”. What can poetry accomplish that prose can not, and vice versa? What kind of stories or messages are better fit for one or the other medium?
 
O.H: Poetry is a rain droplet. Prose is a rain barrel filled with droplets. Both are an expression of creativity; one more compact than the other. Snapshot images or word pictures are best captured in a poem. Concrete or shaped poems add an element of visual design to the published words. I have never seen this done with prose. Poems based on sound or slam poetry are additional forms that work best on the poetic stage versus being printed in a book. Narratives with setting/characters/dialogue are best expanded upon in prose. However there are exceptions to every rule and I admire when writers stretch those boundaries. The prose poem is an example of an interesting blend. I wish I had some statistics to share, but I’m guessing there is a larger audience for prose than poetry. Readers want to be entertained by prose. Poetry is for those who like to think and feel.
 
H: “The Finish Line” seems to be a kind of manifesto within the collection. It explores the vapidity of ‘victory’ in the face of oblivion, rendering the poet alone with her irreconcilable entanglement, all scoreboards darkened or useless. Extrapolate on this relationship between death and the fleetingness of victory in sport, if you would, with reference to your abstention from the use of the period, that final punctuating mark. 
 
O.H: Like the vanishing periods, we are all going to die at some point; some sooner, some later than others. When the casket is lowered, what happens to these “undusted unappreciated trophies of/tarnished men and women/molded in various fitness poses”? Does it matter who is first or last? As stated on the back cover of my book, “Tarnished Trophies wrestles the athletic soul: this essence of winning and losing, loving and changing, growing and shaping”. Divided into three sections: Training, Building Muscle, and Hitting Home, the book also touches on bullying, ageing and yes death, including suicide. The first poem “It Starts Here” explores the planting of competitive seeds. The last poem “This is Where it Ends” is a whimsical resurrection of  “all-star immortal heroes”.  For those who enjoy a challenge, the meaning of life and death is another mystery to solve.


THE EVENT

WHERE: The Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, covered terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Except for the coldest months, the terrace is open to the parking lot behind. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014.

MUSIC: We are quietening down our music to allow for easier conversation than was possible in the past. Consequently, we will have live accompanying music from 6:30 to 7:00, or, if we can't get a musician, piped-in restaurant music.

THE FEATURED POET: Debbie Okun Hill will open the poetry portion of the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, 15 open mic poets will read for about 1.5 hours, ending about 9:00 pm. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader`s list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates to London Open Mic Poetry Night receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by Brick Books and The Ontario Poetry Society. Donations are our only source of income. We still haven't paid off our initial debt!
 

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Frank Davey: new interview and poems, for Nov. 30th book launch

11/19/2014

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Frank Davey will read from his new collection of poetry Nov. 30th at Mykonos Restaurant, as Mansfield Press launches books by four of its authors, including poets Nelson Ball and Laura Farina, and novelist Christine Miscione.  

The four are beginning a tour of Southern Ontario. Davey will read from Poems Suitable for Current Material Conditions, Laura Farina from Some Talk of Being Human and Christine Miscione from her novel Carafola. (Nelson Ball won't be at this event. Someone else will present his poetry collection, Some Mornings.)

Mansfield Press publisher/editor Denis De Klerck and editor Stuart Ross will host the event, which begins at 7:00 pm.

FRANK DAVEY: Current resident of Strathroy, Ont., poet, former Coach House Press editor, co-founder of TISH newsletter in 1961, co-founder of e-mag Swift Current in 1984, editor of poetics journal Open Letter, 'author' of Bardy Google in 2010, author of the tell-much biography of bpNichol, aka bpNichol 2012. Davey, in Sept. 2014, was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, "the highest honour a scholar can achieve in the arts, humanities and sciences." The Royal Society said Davey is "an internationally recognized scholar and a leading figure in exploring alternative and experimental theories of Canadian literature. His critical studies have transformed our understanding of language and discourse in the study of Canadian texts. Professor Davey’s sustained efforts – as critic, theorist, editor and poet – to enlarge and redirect Canadian literature studies have been essential contributions to its contemporary diversity and self awareness."

London Open Mic Poetry Night's new interview with Frank Davey follows the poems below.


Five New Poems by Frank Davey

This

This is going to be a real game changer.
If you’re tired of the game you’ve been playing
or hunting or following
then this is the one for you. A ree-al
game changer. It will change
any game you want, baseball into crokinole
antelope into muskoxen
politics into table tennis—you remember that one
right? Even if you play the poetry game
with this game changer you can convert
villanelles to limericks, free verse
to conceptual verse, Galway Kinnell
to Ron Silliman. This is the one you need
a game changer to change all game changers
don’t get stuck in the same old game
this will change the game of bonds to the game
of derivatives, a bear market to a bull
equities into sparkling futures
parlour games into war games
sex games into video games
rupees into bitcoins
pyjama games into arcade games
X-Box into MP3
chess into Red Dead Revolver
it will change the game of thrones
to the game of deck chairs, the game of life
to the game of death, the game of love
to whatever you want, what could be better?—but wait
if you buy our guaranteed game changer in the next five minutes
we will send you our new life changer absolutely free
so don’t wait, change everything today
get a leg up on the future, be game not gamey, be protean, mercurial
be way far out ahead of the changing game

-

Calls for Progress

Substitutes recommended for religion.
New treatments tested for sex offenders.
Alternatives sought to racism.
New approaches considered for child molesters.
Answers suggested to suicide bombers.
New procedures mooted for terrorism.
Mother hits out against family violence.
New methods investigated for executions.
Solutions required for acid attacks.
New thinking needed for gang rape.
Other means considered for war.

-

In the Moment

This poem is being written in the moment.
I have tried writing poems outside the moment
but that doesn’t seem to work, so this one
is being written in the moment, or maybe inside
a series of moments
because now, not just momentarily,
I can hardly remember
that first-line moment from just
moments ago.

Really mindful of that I am working hard
at staying in the moment while writing this poem
& having tons of mindfulness of it. This poem,
its sounds—poem, moment, mindful moment…
It used to be that you could be caught up
in the moment, as if the moment were a hawk
or maybe a vulture, but you don’t hear
much about that anymore, just like you don’t hear much
about nests of singing birds, so poets have to work now
at being in the moment. There are some people
knocking on my front door, but I think
they are in a different moment so I am trying
to ignore them & their moment
& be really mindful of this poem
& its own moment or moments. This is not the moment
for a sweet hello, this is the moment
for a poem with close attention to syllables, junctures,
punctuation, pitch & phonemes & momentary rimes
if no one minds.

-

Poetry Values

Like most things today
poems need values. Not
just values added
but intrinsic values
built-in values
like the air we breathe, like
temperature values, humidex values
wind chill values.

Values are now a big deal for poems.
It’s not that poems didn’t have values before
but they were subtle, hidden--
no values but in things I believe
one poet said. There’s lots of those--
property values, Blue Book values
core sample values, nutrient
reference values, blood sugar values
body mass values—long poems sure have them.

Today’s poem, especially today’s ‘avant’ poem
must declare its values
they must be upfront values
community values, data values, home values
blended values, Quebec values
seasonal values, constant field values
exposure limit values, must openly
oppose racist values, heteronormal values
traditional operating values
stock values, dollar values
colour hex values and

what’s a poem without obvious values
when there’s so many around.
Values, that is.
What would be the value in that.

-

Bottom Line

The bottom line is not the one to begin with.
The bottom line is the one you hope you will know.
It’s the one you hope will be sufficient
so you don’t have to re-read the other lines.

Sometimes the bottom line is only
a faded bikini line, and sometimes it’s the punchline
and you’re the one that’s punched,
when you get your eyes too close

to the bottom line.
The bottom line
can be the end of the line.
The right-hand end of the line.

If you spend all your time
thinking about the bottom line
you might be writing a lyric poem,
or imagining your life as a lyric poem

and the bottom line is the one
that will make all the other lines about stuff
you were seeing or doing back then add up
give them new value, make them all

shore up your so-called ruins, and say
in some spectacular way
this poem’s
bottomed out, everyone.

-

Interview with Frank Davey
This new interview is by  London Open Mic Poetry Night's Kevin Heslop.

KH: It seems to me that you have been integral in both weaving and criticizing the Canadian cultural tapestry of letters from the late 1950’s and early 60’s at UBC onward. If you’ll indulge the metaphor for a moment, are there any particular differences between the way you engage the tapestry, both creatively and critically, today, and the way you have engaged it in the past?

FD: I wouldn’t think of it as a tapestry – a tapestry isn’t continually in motion. I started writing at UBC in a small community of young writers who exchanged new poems among themselves, read them to each other, arranged their own literary discussion meetings, were extremely aware of British Columbia’s isolation from much of Canada’s political and literary events, and who soon became editors and publishers as well as poets and sent their publications out to participate in and influence such events – you’ve probably heard of Tish, Blew Ointment, The Georgia Straight, Very Stone House, Talonbooks, Pulp Press, New Star Books, NMFG, Island, West Coast Line, Capilano Review – some of which are still very much active. I still think of writing – whether it’s a poem, review, academic book or cultural criticism – as a social intervention – as at least the offering of further alternatives for language, literary form, personal relations, social actions and other cultural practices. 

But I also follow that “further alternative” aim in my own writing. I try not to write books or poems that closely resemble my earlier ones. I look to push my writing some place further – further concerns and means, further provocations – each time out. Robert Duncan used to say “My revisions are my new work.” I wouldn’t want my life’s work to be a tapestry – I’d rather it be an evolving participatory project. 

KH: What can a creative writing class do for a young writer that a six-pack, a notebook and a pencil can’t?

FD: Well, that six-pack, notebook and pencil can’t read your poem, can’t discuss it among themselves, can’t tell you what they think of, can’t show their jealousy, if any, of how good it is, or their pleasure that someone their age is writing so well. One of the best things of being a college student is the community of bright curious people it puts you among. In a writing class the other students are at least as important as the instructor, often – perhaps usually – more so. Most of those students are plugged into a culture similar to the one you are, and are discovering, like you, surprising things elsewhere in their studies. Some of them may be your writing companions for the rest of your life. Many of their discoveries and reading interests may be more important for you to follow than those on curricula. 

Unless you’re sharing that six-pack with other writers, it and the notebook and pencil suggest rather solitary and individualistic writing habits. That’s not the way writing works. It’s a social activity – you write to and for and with others, not just to and for and with yourself. When you publish – i.e. make public – your writing has to find a way through current writing practices, linking with some, building on some, refusing some, and implicitly offering others. You’d better know what those practices are, and that six-pack ain’t going to tell you by itself.

KH: Having witnessed and written from and reflected upon the avant-garde of Canadian literary culture for nearly half a century, where and with whom in your opinion lies the razor edge, the disreputable frontier, the experimental playground of Canadian letters today?

FD:  Let me restrict my reply here to poetry – I don’t believe there is any “disreputable frontier” today in Canadian fiction, and I haven’t been following drama. So much of current fiction writing is predominantly commercial or cultural in its ambition, and forgetful that it could also aim to change the history of fiction writing. Playwrights do much better, probably because the theatre is so obviously social and because – much like for poets – there is little possibility of becoming wealthy. So now I’ve made your question easy to answer – the disreputable frontier currently in Canadian poetry is with Christian Bok, Lisa Robertson, Derek Beaulieu, Peter Jaeger, Erin Moure, Gary Barwin, Sina Queyras, Stephen Cain, and various younger conceptual writers you likely wouldn’t have heard of, such as Jonathan Ball, and to some extent still with Steve McCaffery, who has now been disreputable in Canada for four decades, although almost an established poet in the US. It’s notable that many of these are their 40s – it’s a sign of how conservative official Canadian 'poetry' culture has been – and that they all probably have more readers internationally than they do in Canada. The internet has opened the globe to Canadian poets – they can sidestep the slower-moving Canadian poetry scene and find audiences and risk-taking collaborators elsewhere.

KH: How did your poetic style evolve, who or what influenced you the most?

FD: I was first influenced simultaneously by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, his relaxed yet precise conversational poetic, and by the pretentious Yeats-imitations of one Desmond Fitzgerald, 28th Knight of Glin, who was the acknowledged hero-poet on the UBC campus in the late 1950s, and whose poems embodied everything I didn’t want in my own. I realized that I wanted the sound of my poems to be North American, and perceived also that effectively-communicating poems, such as those of Ferlinghetti, risked being perceived by some audiences as anti-poetry. It was a risk I’ve always been eager to take. My strongest influence in early 1960s was Charles Olson, in the later 1960s it was Robert Duncan and Daphne Marlatt, in the early 1970s Jack Spicer and George Bowering, in the later 1970s and early 80s it was bpNichol and Jackson Mac Low. All of those have stayed with me, with the addition of Charles Bernstein and the painter Greg Curnoe in the 1990s. You’ll notice here the names of contemporaries and colleagues, such as Marlatt, Bowering and Nichol – here’s that social aspect of writing again, that you learn and grow by communicating and interacting.

KH: What, in your opinion, can a poem not do without? 

FD: Language – the communally made medium that we all work with and contribute to.

KH: You mentioned Ferlinghetti's ostensibly anti-poetry style. What does the term anti-poetry mean to you and how has it evolved? Is there a tacit danger regarding modern, colloquial poetry that 'the Tweet shall inherit the Verse'?

FD: I don’t see how these two questions are connected. Perhaps I should have capitalized “Poetry” earlier to distinguish it from “poetry.” There’s been a persistent tendency in English-language poetry to fossilize the understanding of what poetry is – to understand it as whatever the last large new accomplishment has brought. After Milton poetry was understood to sound Miltonic. After Dryden and Pope poetry was understood to be written in heroic couplets and to exclude “enthusiasm.” After the Romantics it was understood to be written in blank verse, odes, sonnets and ballads, and to express “feelings.” After Eliot and the New Critics it was understood to be “impersonal” and sculptural. What is perceived to be unpoetic in any period is relative to the dominant or ‘official’ understanding of poetry – i.e. Poetry. The poetries of Ferlinghetti, Corso and Ginsberg appeared in the 1950s when the understanding of Poetry was that of the New Criticism. At UBC some English faculty suggested that it was material more appropriate to the Sociology department than to English. To them it definitely wasn’t “Poetry” – although later to many of the Language Poets it came to be. As for the “colloquial,” most of the major canonical poets have written in the colloquial language of their periods – Shakespeare, Donne, Pope, Keats, Whitman, Pound. I can imagine all of them tweeting, each quite differently. 

KH: Otsuji [Seki Osuga] once stated : "If 90% of a haiku can be understood it is a good haiku. If 50-60% can be understood it is wonderful. This kind of haiku we never tire of. "  In the vein of the advocatus diaboli, can Osuga's line apply to modern traditional, rather than ostensibly anti-, poetry? Is there implicit value in ambiguity?

FD: I think you have it backward. Your “modern traditional” is usually 90% or more understandable because its poetics have been around for so long and become so familiar. Non-normative poetry is often only 50% or less understandable – sometimes much less – because we haven’t yet learned to read it. In 1959 readers – me included – struggled to understand 20% of Olson and Creeley. Unfortunately, classroom instructors often prefer the familiar and easily teachable Poem. As for the “ambiguity” that you mention, it isn’t usually a property of what Bernstein jokingly calls the “Difficult Poem.” It’s produced by the reader who is unfamiliar with its poetics. Moreover all good poems contain difficult-to-perceive meanings, and reward repeated readings as the reader becomes more familiar with the poem’s means. If a poem doesn’t reward repeated readings with new understanding, it may not have been worth reading in the first place. 

KH: Billy Collins has been known to distinguish the prose writer as looking into peoples' homes from the poet whom looks out his or her own window. As a writer of both prose and poetry, does this distinction resonate with you?

FD: No. It would limit what prose can do to realism and what poetry can do to anecdote.  

KH: Are there any particular poetic mechanisms which you employ on a consistent basis to pique a reader's interest, spur narrative movement or conclude a poem?

FD: Possibly unconsciously, although as I indicated earlier I do try to avoid consistency – I’m not interested in having an identifiable life-long “style” or “voice” – to me having those is a sure way of having your poems  become Poetry. So if I find myself using any “particular poetic mechanisms” in an habitual way, I try to stop. 

KH: "Calls for Progress" seems to redress, with a tongue-in-cheek tone, vain attempts to address systemic issues by way of an endless parade of novel, symptomatic interventions - "Alternatives sought to racism", "New treatments tested for sex offenders". Do you see any specific methods of dealing with these systemic issues directly (apart from writing a poem to identify the flaws of such forms of address)?

W.H. Auden notably wrote that "In our age, the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act. So long as artists exist, making what they please and think they ought to make, even if it is not terribly good, even if it appeals only to a handful of people, they remind the Management of something managers need to be reminded of, namely, that the managed are people with faces, not anonymous members, that Homo Laborans is also Homo Ludens." 

Do you agree with Auden's assessment?

FD: I'm sure you've noticed the resistance of Harper -- and of other politicos and "managers" --  to the concept of the systemic, most recently as it should apply to murdered and disappeared Indigenous women. It's a fundamental political act to insist on it.

And the remedies are collective, not individual. Even Naomi Klein's books are more about mobilizing social action than offering "specific methods" for reforming or ending capitalism.

So yes,  Auden here makes a lot of sense to me. Art should make many people uncomfortable. It should make them more aware of the fissures in their beliefs, the contradictions in their culture's practices, and the often deliberate imprecisions of its language habits.

-

The Event

FEATURED READINGS: 
  •  Poems Suitable for Current Material Conditions, poetry by Frank Davey (See bio above).
  • -Some Mornings, poetry by Nelson Ball:  Ball is a poet, former publisher (Weed Flower Press) and bookseller at Nelson Ball, Bookseller in Paris, Ontario. Nelson is the author of over 20 poetry books and chapbooks, his latest collection of poems is titled In This Thin Rain (Mansfield Press). In the fall of 2014 Mansfield Press will publish Ball’s new book of poetry Some Mornings. Nelson's latest chapbook, A Rattle of Spring Frogs (Hamilton Arts & Letters/samzidat press) can be read in full here. (Nelson Ball won't be at this event. Someone else will present his poetry collection, Some Mornings.)
  • Some Talk of Being Human, poetry by Laura Farina: Farina's first book of poetry, This Woman Alphabetical, won the 2006 Archibald Lampman Award. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of Arc: Canada's National Poetry Magazine and taught Creative Writing to young people in Ontario and Chicago.
  • Carafola, a novel by Christine Miscione:  Miscione is a Canadian fiction writer. Her work has appeared in various Canadian publications, such as  Exile: The Literary Quarterly, This Magazine, and The Puritan. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2012, Miscione’s story, Skin Just, won first place in the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Editions CVC Short Fiction Contest (emerging writer category). Her debut short story collection,Auxiliary Skins, was released in 2013. Carafola is her first novel.

HOSTS:    Mansfield Press publisher/editor Denis De Klerck and editor Stuart Ross.
WHERE:  Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, in the large, covered terrace in the back. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Parking behind, with overflow parking available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.
WHEN: Sunday, Nov. 30th. Starting at 7:00 pm.


        

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