Poem Notes

Balance

It had been about five years since I had been able to write anything close to sustained poetic output.  I had written sporadically but at best despaired at every word written.  And then, unexpectedly, walking away from the high rise complex where I live, I was looking at construction sites across the street with the high cranes at work.  This poem emerged from the moment.

Band of Brothers

The phrase "In the night garden, light is a swallowed cry" is from the poem "Night Garden" in the collection Skin Divers, © Anne Michaels, 1999, which I had been reading the week that I went to a Canadian Forces workshop on the experiences of a wounded sniper.

The individual 'named' in the poem was in the audience that day.

Charcoal

This poem contains some of the same elements that stimulated the writing of Night Skies, namely the old crafter in the oil painting forever poised in the moment of the creation of wool from fleece

Do The Work

There are a number of authors I follow who, when asked "what the trick" is to writing, provide essentially the same answer in a variety of ways:  Put your ass in the chair and write; write every day; do the work.

The phrase 'do the work' stuck in my head and during a phase where I was having difficulty writing any poetry, the following emerged.

For Those Who Follow After

I wrote this short poem in 2003.  I would have been 33.  Other than that information I have absolutely no recollection of what the impetus was.  I should check my journal for notes ... 

Goddess on the Last Train

Heading home to High Park one evening on the TTC subway (Toronto transit for those from away), I overheard a very intense conversation between a not-couple, couple seated across from me.  Though it was wide-ranging they focused on cultural Judaism and religious Judaism.  This poem emerged sitting across from that engagement.

Human Down

I was thinking about mental illness and how it renders people invisible on the street and in the privacy of their own homes.  How people can sink away into darkness, unable to access the support needed.  Thinking about how the call of "officer down" creates instantaneous and focused energy on getting to the individual who has been downed, securing them and getting them to treatment and the laser-like focus on getting the bad guy who felled one of the tribe.  Thinking that should be how we are with everyone.  That the call "human down" should go out and bring immediate and focused attention to stabilization, harm reduction, and hunting down the demons who know our "true names."

Medications Required

While I know what the impetus for this poem was - I think I'll leave it ambiguous.  Let it mean whatever it means out there in the Wild.

For those of you who are not popular culture or science fiction fans, the red pill and blue pill are referenced in the Wachowski's The Matrix franchise. Neo, the protagonist of the series, meets Morpheus, who offers him a choice between a red pill which will allow him to learn the truth about the Matrix (the virtual reality within which they are all trapped), and a blue pill which will return him to his former life, unaware and unawakened.

Night Skies

This poem formed from two quite different stimuli.  One was an oil painting of an old woman, sitting outside her farmhouse with her spindle held high, poised to spin yarn from the raw wool at her feet.  The other was the short story The Star by Arthur C. Clarke.  I was 18.  It was the first time where I experienced the power of a short story that ends with an existential punch to the gut.  I have never forgotten that story read over 32 years ago.  Once you've read the last lines of The Star, you will understand why that moment of choice in the painting between hope and fear but poised forever uncertain came together for me with Clarke's Jesuit priest protagonist.

Of Driftwood and the Sea

I grew up by the sea, on the north-west coast of Scotland.  Shieldaig Bay was somewhat sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean, being about 24 miles short of the Minch facing the Outer Hebrides and, from there, the ocean passage to Canada.  I remember the gale force winds in winter, the sounds of rain on our slate roof, the discoveries on the beaches at low tide: tidal pools, driftwood, and the sometimes appearance of Portuguese Men o' War.  The sea is in my blood even though these days, my 'sea' is the Great Lakes in Ontario. This piece of poetry is an extract from a much longer work that is still in progress but these few lines stand on their own while the longer work continues to steep.

Secret Names

This poem arose out of leafing through Rick Riordan's The Throne of Fire and running across the phrase "it is the power of secret names" ...  I have yet to read the book but I probably should if I got a poem out of just flipping the pages :p   Please note that I doubt the poem has anything to do with the content of said book but cannot be definitive about this until I get around to reading it.

This Still Life

I don't know what it was about that oil painting in the coffee shop that fired up my imagination but it was the seed for many different pieces of poetry.  The one theme they all shared in common was the liminal sense of possibilities - waiting for choice to move from stillness to action.

Writing Exorcise

I'm pretty certain that this poem was written as an exercise from Pat Schneider's Writing Alone and with Others.  Hence the punny title  ...

And now, having checked my writing journal, indeed it was.  The exercise consisted of writing two lists, on the right and left.  One a list of nouns and the other of verbs and adjectives.  The task was to pair nouns with verbs that they would not ordinarily associate with and then write a poem from those word associations.