Nest
Sunrise walk over the hill,
grass wet with morning,
August pavement steaming sun,
mud like black tea, thick murmur
of traffic beyond the trees. You
want to stall the day, pause the rush
to the streetcar, you sit on a worn bench
hover in grey humidity. At your feet
a nest of needles and twigs, a split of bark
fanned like a sparrow's wing. You imagine
placing it in your briefcase among folders
and files you never got to, a bruised pear
pressed against tupperwared salad
that you will likely trash for a slice
of pizza at noon, pen and newspaper -
and today's dreadful headline:
the child dismembered
and scattered across the city.
You lean forward,
pick it up, hold it in the palm
of your hand - warmed by sun,
no bark, no fallen limb of tree,
soft brown feathers, pinched blue
skin and a tiny smooth-bone shoulder.
And the nest, the earth-and-twig hollow
carved by grief, the bell-shaped void
where the rest of the bird went missing.
From Narcissus Unfolding by Jim Nason (2011)
Jim Nason *1957
The exception proves the rule...
Though the aim of this blog is to introduce lesser known female authors I couldn't possibly leave Jim Nason, another Canadian poet, behind. Having introduced Maureen Hynes and Ruth Roach Pierson, I decided that he deserves to be presented on this blog and made known to a wider audience. Additionally, all three are very close as Maureen wrote a critical praise for the back cover of his latest collection Narcissus Unfolding: "[...] Nason's clear-eyed gaze is searing, his perceptions of the natural world and the human startling. His natural musicality combines with the honesty of his poems to bring us closer to our wishes, failings, emotional truths." (Frontenac House Ltd., 2011). Honesty and truth recur in various of Jim's interviews: "I am most influenced by social activists like Allen Ginsberg and Nikky Finney and I want to be the kind of poet who is brave enough to tell the truth, no matter what." (JN on BCP, 1/2012) and furthermore: "I try to tell the truth about what I see and know about the world. I happen to know a fair amount from my personal life experiences but also from my work in social services." (JN on Xtra!, 2/2012). Being a social worker, Jim can reap from his daily observations, while transforming it into an art form which gives him the opportunity to express his inner wisdom: life, its smells, its noises, its limits.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Jim had a better start as a poet than Maureen (see October, 2012): The poem he wrote as an undergraduate won a prize! And in the meantime he has published The Housekeeping Journals (2007), a novel, and The Girl on the Escalator (2011), a short story collection, as well as three books of poetry: If Lips Were as Red (1991?), The Fist of Remembering (2006), and Narcissus Unfolding (2011), the second being his account of his partner's death from cancer. He has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in both poetry and fiction categories and been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies across North America. His success isn't so surprising knowing his credo: "Be the best poet you can be every time!" Working fulltime as a social worker in Toronto, he gets up early in the morning to write. Jim: "I cherish the opportunity to sit with language and appreciate what is revealed through the disciple of the poetic process.[...] The best part of writing for me, by far, is the sense of surprise I get when I have truly surrendered to the process, and the words take me to a place I had no idea existed." (JN on BCP) Like a painter, Jim pays close attention to the things around him. Combined with his discipline, he surely deserves Maureen's praise. Take your time to listen to Jim reading himself from his latest book of poems:
Though the aim of this blog is to introduce lesser known female authors I couldn't possibly leave Jim Nason, another Canadian poet, behind. Having introduced Maureen Hynes and Ruth Roach Pierson, I decided that he deserves to be presented on this blog and made known to a wider audience. Additionally, all three are very close as Maureen wrote a critical praise for the back cover of his latest collection Narcissus Unfolding: "[...] Nason's clear-eyed gaze is searing, his perceptions of the natural world and the human startling. His natural musicality combines with the honesty of his poems to bring us closer to our wishes, failings, emotional truths." (Frontenac House Ltd., 2011). Honesty and truth recur in various of Jim's interviews: "I am most influenced by social activists like Allen Ginsberg and Nikky Finney and I want to be the kind of poet who is brave enough to tell the truth, no matter what." (JN on BCP, 1/2012) and furthermore: "I try to tell the truth about what I see and know about the world. I happen to know a fair amount from my personal life experiences but also from my work in social services." (JN on Xtra!, 2/2012). Being a social worker, Jim can reap from his daily observations, while transforming it into an art form which gives him the opportunity to express his inner wisdom: life, its smells, its noises, its limits.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Jim had a better start as a poet than Maureen (see October, 2012): The poem he wrote as an undergraduate won a prize! And in the meantime he has published The Housekeeping Journals (2007), a novel, and The Girl on the Escalator (2011), a short story collection, as well as three books of poetry: If Lips Were as Red (1991?), The Fist of Remembering (2006), and Narcissus Unfolding (2011), the second being his account of his partner's death from cancer. He has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Award in both poetry and fiction categories and been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies across North America. His success isn't so surprising knowing his credo: "Be the best poet you can be every time!" Working fulltime as a social worker in Toronto, he gets up early in the morning to write. Jim: "I cherish the opportunity to sit with language and appreciate what is revealed through the disciple of the poetic process.[...] The best part of writing for me, by far, is the sense of surprise I get when I have truly surrendered to the process, and the words take me to a place I had no idea existed." (JN on BCP) Like a painter, Jim pays close attention to the things around him. Combined with his discipline, he surely deserves Maureen's praise. Take your time to listen to Jim reading himself from his latest book of poems:
P.S.: Did I succeed in getting you curious about the currenct Canadian poetry community? Go ahead and subscribe to the website of CV2:The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing. Enjoy and spread the word!
Poem of the Month - October 2012
Azulejos: Ceramic Tiles
This is the geometry we want
to make of our lives: an intertwining
pattern that knots its way across the tiles,
its intricate spread, how your eye
traces the curves and angles along
walls and floors and ceilings full
of the complexity of enduring,
deep ochre and rose and indigo.
Palm-sized tiles, Handprints.
What is ground, what is figure,
we can't be sure; under a steady gaze,
each reverses into the other. How we travel together,
and apart; towards each other and into two
infinitely different
horizons.
Horizons
infinitely different
and apart, towards each other and into two,
each reverses into the other. How we travel together,
we can't be sure. Under a steady gaze,
what is ground, what is figure?
Palm-sized tiles. Handprints,
deep ochre and rose and indigo.
The complexity of enduring.
Walls and floors and ceilings
trace the curves and angles along
an intricate spread, how your eye
patterns the knots across the tiles.
To make of our lives: an intertwining -
this is the geometry we want.
From MARROW, WILLOW by Maureen Hynes (2011)
This is the geometry we want
to make of our lives: an intertwining
pattern that knots its way across the tiles,
its intricate spread, how your eye
traces the curves and angles along
walls and floors and ceilings full
of the complexity of enduring,
deep ochre and rose and indigo.
Palm-sized tiles, Handprints.
What is ground, what is figure,
we can't be sure; under a steady gaze,
each reverses into the other. How we travel together,
and apart; towards each other and into two
infinitely different
horizons.
Horizons
infinitely different
and apart, towards each other and into two,
each reverses into the other. How we travel together,
we can't be sure. Under a steady gaze,
what is ground, what is figure?
Palm-sized tiles. Handprints,
deep ochre and rose and indigo.
The complexity of enduring.
Walls and floors and ceilings
trace the curves and angles along
an intricate spread, how your eye
patterns the knots across the tiles.
To make of our lives: an intertwining -
this is the geometry we want.
From MARROW, WILLOW by Maureen Hynes (2011)
Maureen Hynes *!
Marrow, Willow (2011) is already Maureen's third collection of poems. Her first book Rough Skin (1996) won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for Best Book of Poetry and together with her second book Harm's Way (2001), she was shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and appeared in various literary journals across Canada (just to mention some awards and honours...). She has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Prince Edward Island and a judge herself to several poetry contests and awards. And she isn't limited to a Canadian audience: she also won one of Britain's major Poetry Awards, The Petra Kenney Poetry Award, and has given various workshops and readings abroad. Astonishingly, given the fact, as she recalls in the same interview that, when one of her poems were rejected by a campus journal during her undergraduate years, her resolution was: '"That's it, I'm not a poet."'
Not so astonishingly, given her resolution, she first turned to writing fiction when she recovered her creativity later on. Her first published work Letters from China (1981) had been a memoir/travel book of her time as an ESL/EFL teacher in China. Furthermore, she had various stories and (academic) articles published, but: still no poems. Surprisingly, Maureen turned back to poetry in times of trouble and obstacles: writing poetry can feel "like [...] climbing onto a stable and supportive raft in a troubled sea." (MH on BCP). A beautiful explanation that writing poetry means more to Maureen Hynes than shaping beautifully rhyming images and it wouldn't be her if she wrote from a limited personal introspection. In combination with her work as Poetry Editor for the national labour magazine Our Times and having been engaged with various social programmes, she is able to see the big picture and to weave the personal with the political and produce "some magical poems" as M. Travis Lane (PoetryReview, 2011) concludes. Probably, it is her core approach to writing poetry which explains her successfully woven work of art and I would like to end her introduction with another citation and a video of Maureen reading:
"The ability to create art out of language, to shape it, with form, into not just something that's beautiful, but something that also resonates with us emotionally and is taken into the core of our beings and remembered - that is something that feels urgent and compelling to me." (MH on BCP )
*CBP = BlackCoffeePoet: take time to check his blog - he has a very interesting approach to poetry as well.
Poem of the Month - September 2012
"Coming Full Circle" from Contrary by Ruth Roach Pierson
(live at Summerhall during the EdinburghFringeFestival, August 2011,
with humble thanks to Fuji Rademaker for fitting the video)
(live at Summerhall during the EdinburghFringeFestival, August 2011,
with humble thanks to Fuji Rademaker for fitting the video)
Ruth Roach Pierson *1938
Some time has passed since the last poem on this blog. I've always wanted to present Ruth reading live this one poem but I had filmed several poems then and not being a media expert I hesitated. Finally, a very fine friend cut and modified the video and I am finally able to present Ruth, live on stage.
Ruth was with a group of Canadian poets in Scotland and we met by chance at the EdBookFest. She presented me a copy of her latest publication and I was immediately struck by the one poem. Coincidently, it reminded me of a personal episode and I grew curious.
Ruth Roach Pierson actually started late in her life writing and publishing poems. She had been busy teaching as professor at the OISE at the University of Toronto. Though Ruth was born and raised in Seattle, USA, read history at the University of Washington and obtained her PhD at Yale University, she immigrated to Canada with her first fulltime academic position. Until 2001 she taught women's history and feminist studies, offering one of the first women's history courses in Canada. Her teaching also brought her back to Germany where she had lived for a year as an exchange student in 1955/56. In 1997/98 she held a Guest Professorship in Gender Studies at the Ruhruniversität Bochum. She was also vice president to the International Federation for Research in Women's History and published numerous acclaimed academic works and journals.
Poetry wasn't really on her list but the seed has already been planted during her time as an M.A. student at the University of Washington where students were to take one 'elective': Ruth's choice fell on Theodore Roethke's course on Reading Poetry. She was very much impressed then and honoured him belated with a poem in her latest publication ("The Best God-damned Poet in the USA"). But only in 1993 did Ruth start to write poems 'officially' by enrolling in a poetry writing course. It was after her retirement from academe that she also started publishing her work of poetry: in 2002 her first book Where No Window Was and in 2007 Aide-Mémoire which was a finalist for the Governor General's Award in 2008. And lately, her collection Contrary in 2011. In the meantime her praised and prized poems were and are published extensively in anthologies and journals.
Her style is mainly realistic, reflecting on events and incidents, playing with words and rhythm not so much images and not at all limited to a feminist point of view. I was more than delighted to have met her and her fellow Canadian poets as Jim Nason and Maureen Hynes and happy to have been present at their reading. Especially as Canadian authors, let alone poets, are unfortunately not extensively reviewed in Europe. The more the reason to spread the news...Quote of the Month - August 2012
"Where there are critical books of immense complexity and learning, dealing, but often at second or thirdhand, with original work - novels, plays, stories. The people who write these books form a stratum in universities across the world - they are an international phenomenon, the top layer of literary academia. Their lives are spent in criticising, and in criticising each other's criticism. They at least regard this activity as more important than the original work. It is possible for literary students to spend more time reading criticism and criticism of criticism than they spend reading poetry, novels, biography, stories. A great many people regard this state of affairs as quite normal, and not sad and ridiculous..."
From the Preface of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1971)
From the Preface of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1971)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)