Rose DeShaw » Poems

POEMS OF THE LAUREATE CANDIDATES – CAROLYN SMART, MORE TO COME

Rose — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 11:35:43 +0000

CAROLYN SMART – (From, ‘The Way To Come Home.’)

November: Frontenac County

Trees are dark fountains of grief
moaning, summer, summer
in damp and breathless voices
at the place where they pull free
from soil, piles of leaves weep
in their repetitious way,
a haven for nothing

Even the porcupine swings
its quills away in scorn
and continues its solitary parade
towards the frost and shelter

a doe with excitable ears
wide open for the hunter’s tread
stands in a sodden field
steam rising from its nostrils
as we pass, marvelling

All the flowers of summer in memory
we want to fill our cups
with potpourri and sleep
It is November and we yearn
for flight

POEMS OF THE LAUREATE CANDIDATES – FREQUENTLY UPDATED (Helen Humphreys, Michael Hurley, Eric Folsom)

Rose — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:23:51 +0000

(Gradually listing 1 poem per poet on the candidate lists)

Helen Humphreys (From ‘The Perils of Geography’)

Landscape on a Birthday

All day the ground is
restless with mud, glitching up
into hunchback bubbles
plotting the ruin of rocks

birds are sprinkled
against grey sky, speciks
of black pepper flung
up to find the sun

All day the wind is
a blunt hammer swinging
down the row of winter trees

The lake from the window
a stiff blue arm

Michael Hurley – (From: ‘Blue Heron Press Anthology’)

Haley Goes For A Swim (1st page)

You walk into the lake
as if entering a dream
a poem
that buoys you up
the deeper you descend
for you allow it
to enter you
to dream you.
It is assumed
you are half-fish
since of all your family
you remain
immersed
the longest
from 45 seconds
to a year
(for time & space-
those frauds-
curve and bend
like sumac or bamboo
in this world
as much as in outer space
or inner).
Your aunts and uncles,
grandfathers and brothers
you leave on shore
with your shoes
and everyday masks
but here you discover
yourself…

ERIC FOLSOM – (From: ‘What Kind Of Love Did You Have In Mind?’)

The Hills Speak Our Language

come dressed in sheets of water, veiled in glass
make gowns of energy and dress your hair with light
come and take morning for your given name

they brought my family Bible to the glacier’s edge
tossed it into the million-year-old-crevasse
and waited for the words to melt centuries later
for the ancient words to rush down rivers
and water orchards we’d dug with our fingernails
then the railroads came, tearing up the orchards
putting knives in every cake

I speak what I remember, the days are careful
the night has a warm place to sleep
the hills can speak our language of course
that is why they comfort us

and a parliament of starlings will gather
in the town where I once lived
they will eye gooseberries and hurry through
their discussion of lost love
no prophecy can describe the sound they make
as judgment comes forth

let the sunlight from under our tongues
heal your broken hands

ONLY 1 POET LAUREATE – MANY GREAT CITY POETS (FREQUENTLY UPDATED)

Rose — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:40:34 +0000

(Disclaimer: This is an attempt at an objective overview of whom to choose for Kingston Poet Laureate. Though a sometime poet, I am not a candidate, being primarily a writer of Creative Non-fiction.
NOTE- EXPECTING CORRECTIONS/UPDATES This site will be CONSTANTLY UPDATED as information flows in. Some of these poets may be up for Putlizers. Write & say so. No intention of slighting ANYONE, okay?? (Perhaps I’ll maintain this area of my blog after we have our laureate, just in terms of ongoing good poems.)

CRITERIA - First, goes without saying, they need to be permanent IN KINGSTON. Not occasional visitors trailing clouds of glory from their REAL homebase. Then the important questions (Though no poet will have them all): Is the poet: an ongoing mentor? Regularly billets? Has more than one non-self-published book of poetry? Won grants, awards, honours? appointments? Paid paid poetry dues: (membership in League of Poets, starting magazine or reading series, volunteered for national poetry week, etc?) Known particularly for Poetry rather than other arts areas?
Will their election help heal the illusion/delusion/(some say reality) that poetry lives only at the university? Walt Whitman helped disperse that in his lifetime but not in Kingston. For a long while, readings were held ONLY at Queens. (the academic paradigm?) The appointment of a working poet, unaffliliated, would go a long way towards changing that unfortunate perception.

Poetry these days is a hard sell. If you truly hunger after precise, moving use of language, there’s a lot to choose from in Kingston. Some good poets are also better at the marketing and promoting side.

Others write, publish and slough through the poetry trenches, mentoring, supporting and welcoming new poets to the ranks while remaining relatively unknown to the population at large.

Poet Laureate selection time should be an opportunity to recognize the hard work of those behind the scenes as well as selecting one of them to recognize the importance of poetry to this community.

While there’s still time, let me suggest some names that might otherwise be overlooked, along with what little I know about each of them. Of course I’ll miss a lot, those writing and publishing quietly, likely for many years and fully as deserving. Remind me. I have an aging memory.

While Gender MUST NOT enter into the selection of the Laureate, we know – There Are More Women Poets But Men Tend To Publish More Easily. And Finally: It Never Hurts To Have Queen’s In Your Corner.

Obvious Candidates: (No One Would Be Surprised If They Got It: Prominence, Position, Publications, Profile. The Laureate will probably come from here. Short List:

Helen Humphrys - Honours, Awards. Publications. Canada Council. Former Poet in Residence appointment Queen’s.

Steve Heighton-Honours. Awards. Canada Council. former Poet In Residence positions

Elizabeth Greene – Publications. Works for Poetry. Former Poetry Prof some student mentoring Former Queens.

Eric Folsom-Former poetry publisher/editor, (Next Exit Quarterly), former League of Poets Rep, CBC poetry shortlist, Many publications/anthologies/chapbooks, Poetry Prof, (St Lawrence & School system), Workshops, frequent reader/organizer/poetry promoter. 30 yr history as billeter/feeder/driver of out of town poets, down on their luck poets

Carolyn Smart- Publications.Plays. Poetry Prof. Canada Council Poet? Queen’s.

Michael Hurley- Performer/Reader. Many publications. Canada Council Poet? Poetry Prof (RMC) Mentor Royal Military College English Prof

Joanne Page – 3 books of poetry, finalist for Trillium Award, anthologies, workshops, teaching.

Mary Cameron Publications, League of Poets,

Others who MUST be considered:

P.Sri Publications/Translations. RMC Professor
Tom Vincent Publications. RMC Professor?
Laurie Lewis – Publisher. Years on Poetry Scene. League of Poets, Probably Canada Council Poet. Publications.
David Daniel Moses – Poet/Playwright. Publications. Queen’s. Better known outside town. Queen’s.
Diane Dawber- first poet to establish/host monthly reading series in town, unconnected with Queen’s, (Poetry & Company). 7 books of poetry. Billets & hosts poets on regular basis. Countless school workshops. Canada Council Poet. League of Poets.
Bruce Kaufman- started & hosts monthly reading series (Artel Reading Series). Published?
Bob MacKenzie – started/hosted 2 poetry reading series (Chamolean Nation & Gallery Series ). 45 yr writing career. OAC grant. Combines poetry with music & visual art. League of Poets. Press Published?
Pat Andruchuck-Honours. lengthy publishing record. Awards.Better known outside Kingston. Canada Council Reader
Sister Peggy Flanagan - Uplifting poems part of community activism
Jennifer Londry- Moving, unusual writing. Frequent reader. Publications.
Jason Heroux- Witty stuff. Regular publications. Canada Council Poet.
Doug Roy-Publications. Inspires/edits anthologies. poetry group leader, 2 books, League of Poets member
Bonita Summers- press published? Active in poetry scene.
Hugh Barclay- Beautiful presentations. Work behind the scenes. press published?
Erin Foley - Poetry promos. Press published?
Mary Ellen Csamer – League of Poets including Ontario rep. Publications. Long history of work
Leah Browning, Publications, readings, League of Poets
Cory Mayhew, Several anthologies. Press published?
Jan Allen – Writer, Visual Artist, Curator, Poet. Publications.
Clive Robertson
Rielly Stares - anthologies, readings. Press published?
Lorne Shirinian
Others – (some may be Ottawa – please let me know): Armand Ruffo, Shane Rhodes, Terry Ann Carter, Ronnie Brown, Nicola Vulpe, Colin Morton, Blaine Marchand, Anne Le Dressary, John Rivers and Robert Colman.

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Internal Correspondences

Rose — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:01:59 +0000

I was writing when
my stomach
created the first note
and sent it to my brain.
“I am empty,” it read,
“How about that
left over pizza
with cheese and anchovies
in the fridge?’
My brain agreed,
ccing my tastebuds,
who said, ‘ummm’
and emailed my spine which,
with a sigh, unbent
and raised the skeleton, directing
the feet kitchenward.
My mind, however, remained
back in the study still
finishing the poem. Suddenly
the brain began a frantic
texting to all bones
regarding the roller skate
on the stairs. Mind offline,
no warning came.
I plummeted down, nerve endings
utilizing assorted vocal chords
on the internal cell, expressing
ouch and ache. Elbows
immediately posted video
of a good bruising while
the ankles semaphored a possible
sprain. Pain sensors were
forced into doubletime, grouchy,
as they had already put in
a full working day. Union reps
throughout the body gathered
in the right celebral cortex
for a quick consensus,
recommending strike action
if this sort of activity
were to become routine.
On-line updates to all
organs and outlying limbs
laid out expectations from
the parent body.
I was privy to all of this
later, when a packet,
delayed in the synapses,
informed me that
the pizza had
already been eaten
by my husband.

How a Poem Is Made Workshop

Rose — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:50:15 +0000

“Does it cohere? Is it credible?” The British poet, Michael Glover tells us to question the poem we are making in a workshop he gave on a humid Monday afternoon here in this small Canadian prison town, of Kingston, Ontario.a

With his wife, the artist, Ruth Dupre, Glover spoke about the “pure act of fabrication, made of bits of this and that.” His new book, from San Marco Press, a sixth collection of poems, ‘For The Sheer Hell of Living,‘ lay on the table, all 94 pages of it. But he quotes W.H. Auden’s:”Poetry exists in the valley of its making – it makes nothing happen.” He approves of love poetry; “Poetry depends on it for survival.”

“There is no such thing as poetic diction,” Glover pronounces. He is intimate with the language, seeming to know it, upside down, backward, forward, in and out. The clothes on his lanky frame seem coated with words, like the chemicals we spray on cars to keep the road salt off in winter. Glover seems literally made of tasty words, like one of those calligraphic exercises you are told to execute in man-shape. “I always feel slightly sorry for poems trapped in books,” he goes on.

“Iambic pentameter…the ten syllable line, is the absolute foundation of English poetry,” he says. “The poet’s voice falls into it all the time.” He explains the ten stress lines, divided into five bits, with each line containing two stresses, called a foot. An unstressed line followed by a stress. “There are lots of examples,” he says. Then he spouts a line as one: “I couldn’t sleep until I stole your voice.” He gives the six of us a few words and has us construct 4 lines in this verse form.

Around us, in a downtown cafe, employees are counting receipts, mopping the black and white tiled floor, covering the cases and getting ready to close down for the night. Backs to them, the eight of us sit at a long wooden table, heads together, listening and interjecting. Ruth breaks in to clarify, to ask for more illustration, now and then. The two work together as one, to describe something of the dark inside that now and then breaks into a thing of fizz and light.

“The fruits of our reading feed [continuously] into our poems” he assures us. When blocked, the poet does well to read himself whole again. For Glover, an atheist, his back reading is the King James Edition of the Bible and a certain Belgian Surrealist, whose name I did not catch. He reminds us that Wordsworth and Coleridge stirred everything up by using the actual language, as it was spoken in their day, street words rather than ‘literary language.’ Their resources were meter and discourse.

He speaks about how a poem gets made, how all the words we have ever read feed into us, a clash of reason and unreason, as our subconscious does its work. That we must watch free verse lest it become slack prose, crude outpourings of soul without craft. He says there is a re-emergent use of certain metrical openness. He recites a poem from Lewis Carroll about seasons, a serious writing, seldom if ever quoted from the creator of Alice In Wonderland.

“Poetry is an intuitive activity,” he says. “It comes from inside, never outside.” Which indicates the best thing a poet can do is to carry a notebook at all times since a poem is no respecter of time of day or circumstance. “A certain openness to experience always helps to bring on a poem,” he adds. “Cultivate a mood of eager expectancy,” he advises. “Also read other poets assiduously and continuously.” He means reading what we consider the old poets, whose words schmooze up to each other. He believes we should write every day and at about the same time.

We take a break by reading the 20 line pieces each of us was invited to bring. Topics range from sexual teapots, Al Purdy, mothers, bike thieves, memories and, from Jason Heroux, the violence of rain and flowers.

Glover props his bearded chin on one long hand and recommends that we revise continuously, reading our poems out loud once we have finished a draft, not examining just the words but also the sound of those words together. Body rhythms will be in there too. “We have all these words feeding into us while we attempt to cajol our words into the poem.” The afternoon light is waning. Through the window, civil servants are popping into Hondas, going home from work. A summer day sweeps the streets, heavy with exhaust.

The poet Tom Gunn let whatever book he had finished, sit for six months, till it was “cooled down,” he said. He spoke of John Ashbury’s routine in making a poem. He would have his writing on his computer screen in his study, and as was his habit, he would then get up and wander about his study, pouring a cup of tea, drinking some, then setting the cup down, walking further to fiddle with a bookshelf, twiddling his thumbs, examining something on a table, looking out his window at the trees and dogs walking by, then, as if by chance, passing by the computer screen and exclaiming, as though he’d never seen it before, “Hey! What IS this?”

One of Glover’s poems, to close:

The magistrates

The magistrates hold tightly in their arms

Worlds we had never known to sing about,

They rock them, highly, nimble on their feet

Pale flowers are strewn, which keeps the occasion sweet.

The magistrates, those old men, muscled taught,

Sing about worlds long vanished from this world,

Strange, heightened places with viridian streams

Which soodle, winking at the brightest suns

How can these men be magistrates? we ask

How can they uphold laws when all we see

Are goatlike creatures, beckoning with their thumbs

To dance with them and chatter mindlessly?

Michael Glover, (from, ‘For The Sheer Hell of Living’)

On Not Singing Alone

Rose — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:41:50 +0000

I favor sitting in the old chairs
by my front door when the guitar
and the sun is out
wind not strong enough
to pick the poppy petals,
neighbours mellow and not
panhandling. it helps to have
a hound around, lying out so flat
someone swears he’s dead but
for the twitch and snuffle.

The old stuff starts like a teapot
set to whistle; lonelies first, all the
memories, might’ve beens, then mountain
and cotton field songs which always
lead into Jesus. After that a bunch of road songs
some of them the blues and as much
part of me as my toes and whiskers,
singing till the words stick in the wind
like strawberry jam in a beard, till it blows
like Dylan, high and outside while dusk
settles in around us like a good old quilt
being shook out and sleep starts calling
for someone to lie down and get comfy.

Even if it’s just regular hurting, something
you can’t yet make out, or even death’s
drab daughter, I’m inclined to get someone
with any sort of voice at all
to come help me find the song.

Motivation

Rose — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 14:57:14 +0000

(for John)

You’ve got to admire those dead flies

Hanging from the sticky strip

In the far from model kitchen

At least they felt passion,

died in the throes of it,

disappointing spider Sunday dinner

not gone for nothing

but wild with desire

not hunted down,

life fluid sucked slowly

till just dry husk remains,

strapped to nursing home bed.

No more choice.

Decisions have sharp edges,

necessary risk. Weigh the odds.

What do the bookmakers say?

Abandon yourself then,

Glorious, all the mouth sputtering

explosive words; with gusto

chutzpah, pizzazz, tah dah!

Deliver yourself into the arms

of what could be the last love.

Message hanging

till broom or bulldozer.

Swinging in the air

From the sticky strip.

Inukshuk Troubles Poem

Rose — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:43:33 +0000

Oh Inukshuks they have no knees, no knees

Yet they do as they very well please. Oh please

They cannot ride a bike

Though Inukshuk can hike

Like the rates of Olympic park fees

Inukshuks are made out of rocks, they rock

On their flat feet you never see socks, no sock,

Sometimes they may stir

It will rarely occur

But when outraged, Inukshuk could walk

John Barlow knows one on the beach, a peach

Its head is too tall to reach, no reach

He’d like to have poets

Read there and they know it

An Inukshuk PO-etic niche!

Behind one Inukshuk is me, oh me

And maybe another from you, (or he)

These rocks they are old

Never plastic, not sold

Make your own for Inukshuk are free!

Rose

Furtherbird Poem

Rose — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:15:22 +0000

Sharp-beaked starlings dig the dirty drifts, searching for scraps. Flock
has rhythm, moving together, peek hop peck hop poke hop chitter hop
chatter, hoarde of small vacuums attacking the undersides of sofa
cushions, diving for loose change. Splayed tracks in the snow pattern
the shadows. Swing from the housevine, decorate bare branches like
temporary leaves as their birdfathers did before them. The arrangement
of black bird bodies on stark limbs are music notes, treble cleft
tangled below. The evershifting songs composed like this with the tree,
from moment to moment, accompany the wind in her rounds, echo the being
of birds.