Chatting with the well-versed
Four poets discuss their collections and the influence of their own experiences
April is National Poetry Month and the Vancouver Writers Fest is bringing four poets together for Incite next week to commemorate the event.
Alexandra Oliver ( Let The Empire Down), Garry Gottfriedson (Deaf heaven) and John Pass (Forecast) will explore their work in a discussion hosted by Rachel Rose (Marry & Burn) on March 30.
Alexandra Oliver
Q Tell us about your collection.
A Let the Empire Down is my second collection with Biblioasis. In my last book (Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway), I focused mainly on the inertia and lurking menace of suburban life. Here, I explore the theme of escaping — into a new environment, into the past, into the fantasy of cinema — and emerging to reclaim one’s identity. There’s still loads of lurking menace, but I like to think it has more of a focused purpose here. Q How much did your own experiences factor into your writing of these poems? A Quite a bit, actually. I wrote most of the poems on assignment in Glasgow. Removed from what I had figured was the most noxious place on earth, I had time galore to reflect on my past and take responsibility. I think I lost a lot and messed up abundantly, but there’s a triumph in that. I wanted to serve up my failings with a big dose of gallows humour. Hopefully nobody will be let down.
Garry Gottfriedson
Q Tell us about your collection.
A Deaf heaven is a collection of poems about the survival of colonialism and the effects of it. It addresses the political atrocities created all the way from the church to the government and back to life on the reserves in Canada. It openly examines the ugliness of reserve politics, but it also explores the beauty of survival as well. It is a brutal, honest collection of poetry that speaks about human nature. Q How much did your own experiences factor into your writing of these poems? A This whole collection of poetry is about personal experience. Being First Nations in Canada, one cannot escape the realities we face on a day- to- day basis. We are still under colonial rule. This means our survival can draw us to the streets trying to forget, or it can drive us to seek refuge by attaining university degrees, or it can keep us on reserves fighting for a sense of self-worth, or it can lead us to the pen and paper to write about it.
John Pass
Q Tell us about your collection.
A Forecast, Selected Early Poems (1970 – 1990) is a collection of previously published poetry culled from a variety of sources including full- length collections such as Taking Place, AIR 18, Port of Entry, Love’s Confidence, There Go the Cars and An Arbitrary Dictionary, and poetry anthologies Young North American Poets, A Verse Map of Vancouver as well as limited edition broadsheets and ephemera. I engage potentialities — travel, an orchard I care for, evolving relationships, house-building. Some of the poems I wrote for my young son, exploring the perilous hope of new parenthood (“asking courage of me/ as never I needed nor knew it in sorrow.”)
Q How much did your own experiences factor into your writing of these poems?
A Poetry is an intimate art, so the ground of my work is, of course, my experience. But language and the material world are shared entities, and words attuned with lively attention to personal (especially sensory) information can’t help but happen into territory we all know, or take flight to all appearances all by themselves.
Rachel Rose
Q Tell us about your collection.
A Marry & Burn is a collection of poems charting a troubled country, a troubled marriage and relationships marked by addiction and personal struggle. They carry their own hard-won redemption, the clarity that comes when the legends are stripped away, and only the core self and the unvarnished truths remain. Q How much did your own experiences factor into your writing of these poems? A Personal experience forms the emotional truth of much of my poetry, but the details are just as often imagined or made up as they are true to my individual life. This book is a conversation, sometimes with myself, sometimes with my contemporaries, about how we stumble, how we fail ourselves and others and, consequently, suffer.