The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them, eds. Wayde Compton & Renée Sarojini Saklikar

At the Lunch Poems reading series we have featured up to twenty poets a year since 2012. (Though at the time of publication our Lunch Poems series continues, this anthology could only include poets who read for us in 2012-14.) Some of the poets are local and some from afar, some with their first manuscript or debut book in hand and others who have written dozens of books, some lyrical, some experimental, and none of them fitting easily into any simple category. Each poem presented here is followed by the poet’s discussion of its creation. Our goal has always been to be aesthetically ecumenical: to feature poets who are pursuing form from a variety of positions, concerns, and cultural perspectives. (Wayde Compton, “Introductions”)

The poets in this collection take us both inward, into the private joys and hurts of the individual and the family, and outward into a world of conflict and connection, a nexus of locations: past, present, the future. In concept and form, these poems investigate belonging/not belonging, and in so doing, pinpoint markers for our greatest challenge: how to live without destroying ourselves or this planet, all this taken on within the realm of that endless field, a page of words. (Renée Sarojini Saklikar, “Introductions”)

The new anthology The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them, eds. Wayde Compton & Renée Sarojini Saklikar (Vancouver BC: Anvil Press/Simon Fraser University, 2015) is an intriguing array of work by predominantly western poets, all of whom have performed as part of the Simon Fraser University Lunch Poems reading series. Each contribution includes a poem as well as a short statement on the piece by the author, allowing an illumination into an element of the composition process, ranging from the structural to the biographical to the incidental. As Daniela Elza writes on her poem “getting the story/line in order”:

This poem is an excerpt from a longer sequence written to the photography exhibit Story/Line by Larry Wolfson, displayed by the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery in Vancouver (December, 2013). The four fragments here incorporate a number of the images from the exhibit. When I walked into the gallery I was doggedly followed by the grief of a separation. I was coming to the realization that my efforts to keep my family together were to no avail. I was trying to make sense of what was happening to me. The images apprehended me, leapt at me, and in that moment became vehicles for loss. They helped crystallize the conflicted feelings about where, and what, is home. For years I heard what my mind had to say, those were default thoughts of the day. Now, I wanted to learn what the heart thought. It was circling in these sensations like a puppy looking for a place to lie down. It was happy to locate itself in these images. They became containers. I kept filling them. The initial piece was written on the spot, followed by a week of intense editing. One row of words, one row of tears. Reading it in public a week later in the gallery for the art and poetry event was terrifying. Writing, for me, has always helped me make better and more compassionate sense. More importantly, it helps me reimagine new possibilities.

The anthology includes poems and corresponding statements by Jordan Abel, Joanne Arnott, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Dennis E. Bolen, George Bowering, Tim Bowling, Colin Browne, Stephen Collis, Wayde Compton, Peter Culley, Jen Currin, Phinder Dulai, Daniela Elza, Mercedes Eng, Maxine Gadd, Heidi Greco, Heather Haley, Ray Hsu, Aislinn Hunter, Mariner Janes, Reg Johanson, Wanda John-Kehewin, Rahat Kurd, Sonnet L’Abbé, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Evelyn Lau, Christine Leclerc, Donato Mancini, Daphne Marlatt, Susan McCaslin, Kim Minkus, Cecily Nicholson, Billeh Nickerson, Juliane Okot Bitek, Catherine Owen, Miranda Pearson, Meredith Quartermain, Jamie Reid, Rachel Rose, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Jordan Scott, Sandy Shreve, George Stanley, Rob Taylor, Jacqueline Turner, Fred Wah, Betsy Warland, Calvin Wharton, Rita Wong, Changming Yuan, and Daniel Zomparelli. Of course, the appearances of both Peter Culley and Jamie Reid, poets who died this year, are bittersweet, but admirers of the poets and their works are allowed one more glance into their composition. Culley’s statement, for his “Five North Vancouver Trees,” originally composed for the “Moodyville” issue of The Capilano Review [see my review of such here], includes: “Coming into North Vancouver to attend an opening at Presentation House Gallery I got on the wrong blue bus and instead of travelling ten minutes from Park Royal to the gallery the bus kept going uphill for a long, dreamlike time, and the thick hedges and dim lights of those misty upper reaches stuck in my mind. North Vancouver had always been a mysterious, dark place to me, and the poem works if it gets some of that over, folding into the larger narratives of Hammertown without too much strain.”

The collection is intriguing in how the various statements by a group of poets that wouldn’t have much in common, but for a varying gradient of geography, begin to coalesce, overlap and echo each other. The styles and poetics might differ, but the insights and conversations have much in common, and provide valuable insights. As Jen Currin writes on her poem “The Oceans”:

This poem was written not long after Fukushima. I was thinking a lot about the people in Japan and the oceans, about radiation—how radiation knows no borders. I was thinking about communities, relationships, neighbourhoods; experiments in kindness and unkindness; about the effects of radiation on bodies, plants, water. I was thinking about English as a sort of radiation, its role in pushing forward a global capitalist ideology, and how the speaker of the poem, a teacher of English, is complicit in this, yet at the same time wishes to make connections with her students that are not based on this ideology. I was thinking of how students teach teachers, a common theme in the book School, which this poem is taken from.

The cities are Vancouver and Tokyo, but really—all cities where people struggle to live connected lives.

Jamie Reid (April 10, 1941 - June 25, 2015)

Sad news from Vancouver: poet and activist Jamie Reid has died. As his wife wrote via his facebook page on Saturday (where this photo was borrowed):

Dear Friends

Our beloved Jamie died suddenly on Thursday afternoon, June 25, at home in Vancouver. You should know that his last day was filled with happiness and healing energy, and he was vibrant. The family will be saying goodbye on Wednesday at a private ceremony at the Boal Chapel near Capilano University. A public celebration and memorial will be organized soon where we can all get together to share our love and respect. In the meantime, know that we are managing with the support of close friends and relatives, and are filled with love for him.

Regards to you all, Carol

As much as he was a senior poet in the Canadian writing community, co-founder of TISH and general (positive) rabble-rouser for poetry and poetics, he was also quite generous towards younger poets, such as through his involvement in the occasional journal TADS. He was also instrumental in bringing John Newlove back to Vancouver in the late 1990s for what was not only his first Vancouver reading in more than a decade and a half, but his final Vancouver reading. His energy and generosity will be missed.

For more information on Jamie Reid, check out his ABC Bookworld page here, or this 2014 piece on him by Joanne Arnott. His Mad Boys is still online as part of the Coach House Books archive, his I, Another, The Space Between: Selected Poems is still available from Talonbooks, and his literary archive is housed at Simon Fraser University.

Gerry Gilbert, COUNTERFEIT PENNIES

There most likely aren’t too many titles by the late Vancouver poet and publisher Gerry Gilbert (April 7, 1936 – June 19, 2009) in print anymore, with the exception possibly of the chapbook PERHAPS (Toronto ON: BookThug, 1999) and the reissued Moby Jane (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2004), but the enthusiasm for his work appears to have steadily increased over the past few years. Since Gilbert died, a tribute blog appeared, with regular updates, and there are more references to him online that one might think, for an author who barely published through trade form over his last two decades. Now, thanks to Vancouver poets Lary Bremner (publisher of Obvious Epiphanies Press), Carol and Jamie Reid, who went through Gilbert’s archive, we now have access to his COUNTERFEIT PENNIES (North Vancouver BC: obvious epiphanies press, 2012) as a free pdf download.

During the early 60’s in Vancouver, Gerry Gilbert was part of an informal grouping of “downtown Vancouver poets” with John Newlove, Judith Copithorne, Maxine Gadd and Roy Kiyooka, less a group than a ying to the yang of TISH. With a healthy distrust of editors and (seemingly) publisher, Gilbert’s expansive ouvre appeared in trade form with great effort, as he infamously refused to have his work edited. He even turned down the opportunity to be in a series of selected poems that Talonbooks produced around 1980 (others in the series included bpNichol, Daphne Marlatt and Fred Wah). As Frank Davey wrote about Gilbert in From There to Here (Erin ON: Press Porcepic, 1974):

Gilbert’s experimental world is that of most men alive in these decades, mundane, trivial, thoroughly non-spectacular – enriched only by the easily missed miracles of animals, plants, the weather, or intimate human gesture. He presents this world in the way in which it impinges on him: a puzzingly discontinuous flow of broken images. “AND”, the title of one of his books, is the usual Gilbert conjunction, since it implies no logical structure or relationship. To Gilbert, experience is endless non sequitur.

As Davey suggests, Gilbert’s writing was an endless, singular line of ephemera, miracles and “intimate human gesture,” documenting the entirety of what he saw, felt and did, taking the Frank O’Hara “I did this, I did that” poem to its extreme. Dated 1996 to 1997, Gilbert’s COUNTERFEIT PENNIES is wonderfully reproduced exactly the way the author intended, scanning directly from the mass of binders that filled his small apartment. There is the strangest kind of detail in Gilbert’s work, knowing that his work was composed of a single, straight, life-long line, one that readers only saw in the comparatively briefest parcels.

            The way he said it to me, that I didn’t remember but we’d met years ago, put me on the defensive right away, smelling trouble. He got my number alright. I’m so beat I can barely play along enough to read the paper; or want what I really want; or really want what I want. As my voice gets fainter, I pile on the wisdom; bore ; ing. If you know what this means, you must have read it already.

There aren’t many copies of Gerry Gilbert works available out in the world anymore, but I’m sure if you want to read further of his works, I’d recommend jwcurry’s Room 302 Books in Ottawa as the best place to begin.

Billy Little (1943-2009)

Mere months after the release of Vancouver poet Billy Little’s St. Ink: Selected Poems, selected by Jamie Reid and George Stanley (Vancouver BC: Cue Books, 2008), comes this sad note from Jamie Reid:

Billy Little: October 14, 1943 - January 1, 2009

Our dear comrade and brother poet, Billy Little, slipped away from this life at about 5 AM on New Years Day. It almost seems to me as if he were imitating one of his idols, dada hero Tristan Tzara, who died on Christmas Day in 1963. For several days he had been telling his friends that each day might be his last, but he hung on and continued to breathe one day after another for several days, until finally he lost the ability to speak and passed away. Billy spent his last days on his beloved Hornby Island, surrounded by his friends.

He had been resigned to this final result since hearing from his doctors last January that the abdominal cancer through which he had endured several rounds of chemotherapy and surgery would finally take his life in a matter of months rather than years. He lived the months that were left to him with great courage and good humour, sometimes in tears, he told me once, that he should have to leave the world, the life and the people that he loved with such passion and devotion. The people at his bedside near the end, his son Matt Little, Gordon Payne and his caregiver, Colleen Work, confirmed that through his last hours, though he could not speak, he was clearly smiling.

Billy’s son, Matt, will be inviting friends to the Hornby Island ball park on Sunday, January 4. In commemoration of Billy’s life-long devoted attachment to books and ideas, Matt will be handing out items from Billy’s book collection.

Further notice of an expanded memorial event will be posted later.

Typically, Billy left his life with a jest, a protest, leaving behind his own obituary:

obituary

after decades of passion, dedication to world peace and justice, powerful friendships, recognition, being loved undeservedly by extraordinary women, a close and powerful relationship with a strong, handsome, capable, thoughtful son Matt, a never ending stream of amusing ideas, affections shared with a wide range of creative men and women, a long residence in the paradisical landscape of hornby island, sucess after sucess in the book trade, fabulous meals, unmeasurable inebriation, dancing beyond exhaustion, satori after satori,
billy little regrets he's unable to schmooze today.
in lieu of flowers please send a humongous donation to the war resisters league.

I'd like my tombstone to read:

billy little
poet
hydro is too expensive

but I'd like my mortal remains to be set adrift on a flaming raft off chrome island

A poet, activist and small publisher in BC for decades, his St. Ink not only collects a selection of Little’s poetry over the years, but includes a selection by admirers such as Lionel Kearns, Gordon Payne, Goh Poh Seng, George Stanley, Renee Rodin, Pierre Coupey, George Bowering, Judith Copithorne and Trudy Rubenfeld. As Kearns begins his piece, “Postscript to Bill’s collection”:

Billy Little’s biography has been around. It seems to start up very young somewhere in America. It hangs out at the New York City Public Library and poetry readings down at St. Mark’s. It swings up to Buffalo, where the action is. It loiters among the poets in San Francisco. Eventually it pushes on north to Vancouver, and ends up in Nowhere B.C., the only absence with a Canadian postal code (V0R 1Z0). These days it seems to be located on an island. You can tell by the images: cormorants, ferry line ups, fish boats, salmon chanted evening.

Billy has always been a full time poet, although from time to time he has held outside positions such as editor, publisher, gallery manager, book store owner, impresario, teacher, student, public speaker, commentator, reviewer, lover, partner, father, and grandfather. Many years ago I caught him with each of his hands on the handles of a wheel barrow, though I doubt if he would admit such a thing now: help the planet he counsels us: stop working/ don’t succumb to the addiction of employment. Nevertheless, poetry is the job he works at all the time. Whenever it’s happening, there he is, the most committed poet I know.

But I will leave the last words for Billy Little, himself:

MEMORYY
for david phillips

I remember how frustrated Jesus got
building those tacky villas for the roman yuppies
gentrifying the Sea of Galilee
how his tongue became
myriads of venomous snakes
how he ate mouse sushi
for weeks on end
you could sell him two bushels of mint
it wouldn’t be enough

2. The Satin Man
“where’s the man could ease a heart
like a satin gown?” – Dorothy Parker

remember that halloween,
jesus put on the red mask
tied the pointy tail to his plaid pants
hoist the rusty pitchfork
and went out trick or treating in the treetops

where the shrieking primates
tosses polished acorns
at his swollen red scrotum

that halloween jesus changed the maples leaves
into currency
made the blue bummed orangutans
eat swimming pools of money pudding

after His tracheotomy
His lips spelled
everything He didn’t say

bill bissett: inkorrect thots

This is an email from Vancouver poet Jamie Reid. He sent this out with a small and large version of a piece by Canadian poet bill bissett as pdf (that of course blogger won't let me post). To get copies of the poster, send an email to Jamie at dadababy@shaw.ca

poets artists nd uthrs

wth much fere of being seen to bee provokativ i heerbye send to yu wuns mor
sum copees of the faymus pome by th faymus poet bill bissett called
INKORRECT THOTS

ths posting is konnected wth an internashunul postering campayne in wch
copees of ths poster have alredy appeered in manee canadian citees, frm
british columbia to nova scotia, but also in london, england, in detroit nd
buffalo nd maybee in gambia so far. Ther hav been sum suggestions uv
postings on skanderbeg square in tirana and on the grave of byron. manee
othr writrs hav alredy becum involvd. ultimatlee we hop that they will
appeer on the graves of rimbaud nd manee othr faymus poets nd we ask yu to
help us to acheeve our internashunal objectives.

th basik nd most simple eyedea is to post the poster
in visibul publick places wher people may hav time to reed it,
and if yu yrselves have time,
to monitor what happens to eech poster ovr the cors of time
nd make reeports to mee by e-mail at dadababy@shaw.ca

All uv ths is opshunal uv cors, according to yr own deezirez, but th feeling
of most participants is that it wd be bettr to post thes aftr the new year,
closr t th elekshun, so tht th big X on th postr cn hav its maximum eefekt
nd meening.

PLEEZ NOTE:

Thr ar 2 sizes being sent in PDF format.

THE LARGR WUN CN ONLEE BE PRINTD ON PRINTERS WHICH ALLOW 17 INCHES.

th smallr wun (8 1/2 x 11) shd be OK on eny printr, nd thn, if yu wish,
yu cn take it to a printr and hav it blown up
in as manee copees as you wish,
or yu cn simplee post the small wunz
in larger quantitees so as to fill up the space.

hard copeez uv the larger size are available by snail mail,
r by sending me an e-mail ( dadababy@shaw.ca )
r by riting to me at

279 East 6th Street
North Vancouver, BC
V7L 1P4

ssshhhh! pass it on.......

jr

bill bissett is a rare bird in Canadian poetry, in that he manages to produce a huge amount of work, but somehow slips on and of the grid in regular intervals. One of the new wave of Canadian poets and publishers from the 1960s, bissett was involved (with Seymour Mayne and Patrick Lane) in Very Stone House in British Columbia, and on his own, published the magazine blewointment, which was one of very few outlets at the time publishing non-linear works such as concrete and visual poems (along with bpNichol's own publications, such as GRONK and Ganglia). Moving into books, the whole blewointment experiment was finally sold in the 1980s (but has since been re-launched by Nightwood publisher Silas White). Imagine: every eighteen months, bill bissett, for nearly as long as I've been alive (or perhaps longer) has had a book of his poetry edited and produced by Vancouver's Talonbooks, and he still manages to produce and show artwork all over the country (there was even a "colouring book" that came out a few years ago with New York's Granary Books). Working phonetically, his work is certainly unmistakable, and you can find him all over the internet as well as in various small press publications. But still: why isn't bill more well known?