It was a warm evening on September 13th
when I rode to University College for my first Canadian Poetry lecture.
When
I arrived at the lecture theatre, there was one student sitting at the very
back of the room, working on his laptop. I asked him if this was Canadian
Poetry. He barely looked at me and just shook his head to indicate that he
didn’t know and maybe a touch of, “I don’t give a fuck.” He was obviously not a
poetry student and was just using the empty room for the wi-fi and the privacy.
The lecture hall
was heavily air conditioned. I had told myself so emphatically that I was going
to bring a long sleeved shirt that I must have thought that I’d actually done
so. But I didn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t extremely uncomfortable and I forgot about
it once the lecture started.
As
I sat there waiting, I had nothing to do but look around the lecture hall and
decide whether I liked it or not. It’s ugly and uncomfortable. It has long,
narrow tables for each row and to each table is attached fourteen seats. The
seats are the kind that one has to swing and pull out in order to sit in them
and then swing back to the right in order to face the front. The problem though
is that they shift forward if one doesn’t apply a small amount of pressure with
one’s feet on the floor.
The
front row is also a lot closer to the front wall than in most lecture halls, so
I hoped it wouldn’t be overwhelming when looking at the projector screen. The
blackboard would be okay though.
University
College is a beautiful old building, and some of the rooms still reflect that.
This particular lecture theatre has been drastically modernized, but it at
least still has the big old wooden window frames with the artfully carved
corners and the wooden inside shutters.
A
guy in his 40s, wearing a baseball cap came in. I thought that he might turn
out to be our instructor, but he sat in the front row in front of the podium,
so it looked like he was either a mature student like me or the TA.
As
I was sitting there and waiting, I reached into my for my phone but discovered
that I’d forgotten to bring it. I’d forgotten to bring it because it was not
sitting in its usual place, but was rather charging when I left. That meant
that it had been fully charged hours before, so I hoped that it wouldn’t cook
the battery, thereby shortening its life.
At
the time the class was supposed to start, our professor still wasn’t there. A
few minutes later though I was pleasantly surprised to see George Elliot Clarke
walk in and up to the front. I had no idea that he was going to be our
professor. The first thing he did was what he does everywhere. He handed out
his business cards that come with being the poet laureate of Canada.
He
told us first of all that he was scheduled to do a reading that night at 20:00
and so the class would be finished at 19:30, instead of the scheduled 21:30.
He
told us that we would be looking at poems from a Canadian English language
poetry textbook, but he said that we would be welcome to bring in Canadian
poetry that we have translated from languages other than English.
He
urged us that during this course we should think expansively about how Canadian
poetry is done, published, circulated and philosophized.
There
would be no exam for this course, but we would be required over the year to
produce four papers of seven pages each, featuring our opinions backed by
research on the topics given. Then he offered that for our final paper we had
the option of handing in a twenty-page selection of our own poetry, informed by
our readings of the poets presented in the course. The presentation though
would require a two-page statement that explains how our poetry has been
informed by the readings of this course.
George
was a bundle of energy and so enthusiastic.
He
told us about the anthology, “70 Canadian Poets” that we would be using for our
textbook. He said that it came out in 1970. He said that he remembers 1970 for
the October Crisis. Then he declared that, “Everyone should have an October Crisis!”
He also remembers 1970 for the beginning of Sesame Street. It was actually
November of 1969, but close. He riffed, “From Cookie Monster to FLQ Monster!
From Big Bird to blowing stuff up!”
He
warned us that we would be studying meter in this course, but urged us to relax
about it since the fact is that the way we speak English is in iambic
pentameter. Then he slowed down while speaking normally to show how that was
the case. He declared, “It’s as natural as marijuana!” Then he said that on the
day they legalize pot, he wants to see our prime minister and his cabinet in a
video, smoking big spliffs with Leonard Cohen music blasting in the background.
Then when they are sufficiently stoned, he hopes they will go and make some
good laws.
I’ve
heard George read his poetry on two or three occasions, and he’s not only a
good writer, but he’s also a great performer. I like him even more as my
spontaneous new professor.
Our
first readings would be from E. J Pratt to F. R. Scott. These are the first
generation of the Canadian modernist poets. Pratt was an immigrant to Canada
from Newfoundland, which had not yet joined confederation. He tried very hard
to be Canada’s national poet, but it’s not easy with, including the Great
Lakes, four coasts, ten distinct provinces, each containing diverse cultures
with different histories of development. There were the Acadians of the east
coast; La Nation in Ontario, which has its own flag; Les Brayons of northern
New Brunswick, where my mother was born and raised, and which also have their
own flag, which is the flag of the Republic of Madawaska; there are the Metis;
and then Cape Briton, which is one of the few Gaelic speaking communities in
the world; he referred to the Danish community in northern New Brunswick where
people still speak Danish (I can attest to that. My father and both of his
parents could speak Danish, though they were all born in North America); the
Ukrainian communities on the prairies… Then he said, that Saskatchewan and
Alberta had banned Russian vodka and asked if any of us knew why. I suggested
“agricultural competition” to which he declared, “Good guess!” but that wasn’t
it. Someone finally answered correctly that it was because of Russian
aggression in the Ukraine. I looked it up later though and found that it was
Manitoba and Saskatchewan and that they were considering a ban that didn’t
happen.
George
asked if we were familiar with the Newfoundland dictionary. No one was, so he
exclaimed, “Shame on you for not being familiar with the rich dictionary of
Newfoundland English. Five hundred pages, for cryin out loud!
Four
churches, including the Sally Ann, ran Newfoundland’s education system.
There
was class conflict between the fishermen and the businessmen in St Johns.
E.
J. Pratt was a minister who was also interested in science, particularly the
ideas of Charles Darwin. He tried to show he was with it by mentioning science.
His poem, “Brébeuf
and His Brethren” reflected prejudices of the era in that he portrayed
indigenous people as savages. A more successful poem was “Towards the Last
Spike”, but F. R. Scott skewers “Towards the Last Spike” in a short poem in
which he says that in an epic poem about building the Canadian railroad he
forgot to mention the Chinese, who actually built it.
Ours is an
extremely diverse country. The western provinces in Pratt’s day were
effectively colonies of Ottawa but they became provinces. Then George started
declaring that there are other places that could become Canadian provinces,
such as the islands of Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. He also suggested
there are strong cultural reasons for Canada to annex New Orleans. When I was
looking all this up I discovered there is a serious movement among some people
in Vermont to have that state join Canada. I mentioned Maine and told him that
northern Maine is culturally very similar to New Brunswick.
George mentioned
the use of rhyme in poetry as an unthreatening, witty means of providing
satirical commentary.
Canadian modernism
was more elitist than US modernism.
He referred to
Charles G. D. Roberts as “Charles God Damn Roberts!”
He declared that
English Canadian poetry never had a Walt Whitman. He allowed that maybe Al
Purdy is close, but he’s very erudite working class.
As for Pratt, if you cut open his heart it’s
not filled with truck stops, lumberjacks or oilrig operators. It’s actually
un-working class.
“Robert Service, for cryin out loud!”
George says, “For cryin out loud!” and
“Holy smokes!” at least once in every paragraph he speaks.
William Henry Drummond and his Habitant
poems.
But there is very little academic respect
for Service or Drummond.
I asked, “What about ‘the people’s poet’?
What about Milton Acorn?”
He
thanked me for bringing him up. He said hat Acorn doesn’t have enough mass
appeal to be our Whitman. No ivory tower credibility. George told us that he
unveiled the plaque on Wards Island for Gwendolyn MacEwen and Milton Acorn.
They were both mystics but Acorn was a bit too communist to be a mystic. He
wasn’t university educated and there was a bias towards that. He was more
spontaneous and organic because he was less informed.
Elitism colours and tinges Canadian
poetry.
Canadian poetry has made a deliberate
effort to distinguish itself from the poetry of the United States.
So far I was really enjoying George
Elliot Clarke as a professor.
He pointed out that one of the
differences between regions is that in Halifax, drivers stop for jaywalkers.
They don’t extend that courtesy in Toronto.
He told us that in the spring we would be
reading one whole book of poetry a week by a Canadian poet (I recognized that
some of those poets are people that I’ve heard featured at poetry readings). We
will be looking as well at poetry as book art.
George said that he doesn’t like the
division between print and spoken word in poetry. He thinks it has a racial
tinge.
“Fire and brimstone on the police, who
always deserve it.”
He talked about our 2017 book list and
assured us that though he has put his own book, “Execution Poems” on the list,
it’s only recommended. He added though that it did win a Governor General’s
Award, “So that’s pretty good!”
We will be reading a book by Wayde
Compton, who George says is both a mix-master and a professor.
Jeff Derksen’s book consists of prose
poems that are also little news stories.
Michael Ondaatje’s “The Collected Works
of Billy the Kid” is full of vivid verbs and came from watching Spaghetti
Westerns and reading comic books.
Soraya Peerbaye’s “Tell” is a book that I heard Soraya read from
last June. It’s a true crime story about the Reena Virk murder. I wrote a
review of what I heard from her that said her set of poems about Reena Virk’s
murder suffered from distance. She couldn’t call up any strong images because
she wasn’t there to mine them from the moments of the event. It’ll be
interesting to see if I change my mind after reading the whole book.
We will be reading
a feminist work by K. I. Press, entitled “Types of Canadian Women”, which
George referred to as a work of art.
Another writer who
I’ve heard read on several occasions is Giovanna Riccio. I think I’ve even
heard her read from her book, “Strong Bread”, about Italian immigrant women.
Thunderbird Poems
by Armand Ruffo is an attempt to understand Norval Morrisseau by poetically
describing his paintings.
Someone asked
George how we could get in touch with him. He said he’d give us his email
address. I pointed out that his email is on his business card. He said that’s
his parliamentary email address, and he assured us that we are welcome to write
to him by that means, but he warned us that someone from the government of
Canada reads those emails before he gets them and if they don’t like the
message he won’t get it. Then he told us he was only kidding and that he always
gets the message but that it does take a little longer. Instead he gave us his
gmail address that he got when he was poet laureate of Toronto: torontopoetlaureate@gmail.com.
I thought that was hilarious, since even though Anne Michaels is the poet
laureate of Toronto now and even though other people will be for years to come,
George Elliot Clarke has locked the gmail address.
All professors are
required to give their classes a lecture about plagiarization, but George just
said, “I don’t need to say, ‘Don’t plagiarize’, so I didn’t say it.
“Everybody’s
liberated! Class dismissed!”
As I walked out of University College, the moon
was bent backwards on the right side of its face, but smiling widely.
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