#canadian poetry

[gennsoup]

Spoons, however: there are no spoons in Nature, or not on animals. We imitate ourselves. Here, let me help you: two cupped hands.

Margaret Atwood, Table Settings

#Margaret Atwood #Table Settings #Dearly #spoons #utensils #nature #nature quotes #humanity #help #hands #Canadian poetry #poetry #poetry quotes #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature #book quotes #books #words #text

[mywifeleftme]

361: bill bissett & The Mandan Massacre // Awake in Th Red Desert

Awake in Th Red Desert bill bissett & Th Mandan Massacre 1968, See/Hear Productions (Bandcamp)

(From “mor memoreez uv marvara reel konversaysyun,” scars on the seehors, Talonbooks 1999)

That’s a sample of how poet bill bissett’s writing looks on the page, phonetic and arbitrary, intuitive and free, while also checking the reader from taking any word for granted. The poems are frequently conversational in tone, but the way you have to sound out his writing to understand it means the reader's cadence ends up replicating the idiosyncratic singsong way bissett speaks. The 84-year-old remains a one-of-a-kind live performer, doodling all over the line between spoken poetry and song. He croons nonsense lullabies and pastiche ragas, shakes a maraca, intones mantras until their familiar words lose all their sense, even dances a little. It’s funny—I wouldn’t recommend his writing to someone unfamiliar with the avant-garde, but I would confidently take just about any open-minded person to see one of his shows. He has the affect of a holy fool or a joyful monk, and basically anything he does makes more sense in the context of his corporeal presence.

Back in 1968 though, bill was a wild young man, and Awake In Th Red Desert, his LP with backing “band” Th Mandan Massacre, is full of noisy freakouts and some patience-testing explorations. The Massacre includes four percussionists, some trained (jazz drummer Gregg Simpson) and some not (poet Martina Clinton, bill’s then-partner); electric guitar; two flutes (one a toy); and cutting edge Buchla Box synthesizer by the otherwise unknown Wayne Carr. Response to Red Desert has been pretty mixed—one of its Bandcamp uploads even warns, “Please preview the tracks before downloading. There are no refunds.” I suspect many listeners don’t make it past the first side of the record, which often sounds like what it is: clattering free improvisations around bissett’s sung or shouted recitations. On the flip though, things mellow out for some fascinating minimal synth explorations, bissett doing his visionary thing on a haunting electronic field (see “fires in the tempul”). “she, still and curling” is particularly freaky, Carr making sinister cricket noises with his Buchla, tape of bissett’s voice chopped up into hypnotic loops, layered and manipulated till it sounds like a collage of short wave radio transmissions. The ramshackle noise of the early tracks eventually returns on the awesome “now according to paragraph ‘c’”: bissett reads what (initially) seems like a found text that gets weirder and bolder as the poet works himself into a lather, the Buchla’s bleak tones tattered by the percussion squad’s stiff beat.

I snagged this off Montrealer Alex Moskos, who oversaw the reissue for Massachusetts-based avant-garde label Feeding Tube, and getting this thing back out there has clearly been a labour of love for him (the production quality is impeccable; great explanatory liner notes too). Are there 500 people who want this record? I’m not sure. But for fans of bissett, sound poetry, freaky music, and early electronic, this’ll be of interest. One idea: tell people Awake was the work of a solar death cult leader from the Pacific Northwest who disappeared during an eclipse and they won’t be able to keep the damn thing in stock.

361/365

#bill bissett #sound poetry #avant garde #'60s music #canadian music #blewointment #talonbooks #bpnichol #canadian poetry #poetry #concrete poetry #performance art #freak folk #buchla #music review #vinyl record #counter culture

[manwalksintobar]

Feeding the Deer Marineland 1987  // Paul Vermeersch

What I was before and then after I was bitten by the glorious white-tailed buck were as far removed as velvet and bone.

Deer don’t bite. I was that naïve. I dropped my cone of dog food to the pavement. A claret bruise blossomed in my soft underarm. None of us knows why we are free or not free. Nothing with so many thorns in its belly could ever be fed by hand.

Velvet peeled away from my heart, my delicate pericardium, shocked that something beautiful did not love me.

I grew six terrible inches. My bones hardened into their permanence.

#poetry #Paul Vermeersch #Canadian poetry #deer #growing up #unrequited love

[peachynm]

#nicole mae #poet #poetry #poetry magazine #indie magazine #magazine #lit mags #canadian poetry #queer poetry #poets on tumblr #poem #love poem #digital magazine

[ammonitetestpatterns]

erin mouré, furious, anansi, 1988.

#erin mouré #canadian poetry

[getcareless]

The Temple

I saw a temple up on a hill (there was snow, there was a chill).

I went inside where it was dark (I could swear the air was still).

The wind blew in - upon my will (it carried voices as they spill).

I breathed it all into my heart (into my lungs the laughter trills).

All the voices cheer and harp (I felt you grow from the start)

They knew I loved you hard (they knew my love was sharp).

I’ll go with them, yeah, I’ll go far (they’re with us wherever we are).

JP

#poetry #twcpoetry #writerscreed #poetryportal #poeticstories #poetryriot #poets on tumblr #december #2022 #poems #poets #canadian poetry #canada #free verse #lifestyle #poetryislife #design #art #writing #alt lit #creative writing #brokensoulsreborn #blotchedpoems #kneipho #lzlabseesu #inkstay #illustrans

[canadachronicles]

"Let us put awhile away All the cares of work-a-day, For a golden time forget, Task and worry, toil and fret, Let us take a day to dream In the meadow by the stream. We may lie in grasses cool Fringing a pellucid pool, We may learn the gay brook-runes Sung on amber afternoons, And the keen wind-rhyme that fills Mossy hollows of the hills. Where the wild-wood whisper stirs We may talk with lisping firs, We may gather honeyed blooms In the dappled forest glooms, We may eat of berries red O'er the emerald upland spread. We may linger as we will In the sunset valleys still, Till the gypsy shadows creep From the starlit land of sleep, And the mist of evening gray Girdles round our pilgrim way. We may bring to work again Courage from the tasselled glen, Bring a strength unfailing won From the paths of cloud and sun, And the wholesome zest that springs From all happy, growing things."

--A Day Off, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Any day spent with my girl feels like a day off, even when I must leave her for a few hours to work. But travelling with her around North Island these past few days, proper days off, has been sheer bliss!

#A Day Off #Lucy Maud Montgomery #Poem #Poet #Poetry #Canadian Poem #Canadian Poet #Canadian Poetry #Quote #Literary Quote #Literature #Canadian Literature #19th Century Poetry #20th Century Poetry #19th Century Literature #20th Century Literature #Ava #My Love #My Girl #The Girlfriend #Aotearoa #New Zealand #Canada Chronicles

[smpalardyartlife]

'spirit of the night' by sm palardy

#digital art #artists on tumblr #emerging artist #original art #image of the day #abstract art #art numérique #artiste #artistequébecoise #canadian poetry #Canadian artist #Canadian art #sm palardy

[laikacore]

in sudbury, they have red dirt

by the side of the road where the weeds grow

between my toes at the edge of the lawn

where the grass isn’t enough.

on prince edward island, they have red dirt

nobody remembers my childhood like i do

when i look down and see over and over again

the great red rocks on the side of the highway

the great red dust across the dirt road

the fade of the soil into the sand

the lapping of the lake at the dock

the endless eye of the ocean.

where i am is nowhere i’ve been before

nowhere i may be again

but for now i’m here

and beneath my feet, they have red dirt

mineral of the memory by laika wallace

#prince edward island #childhood memories #poetry #canadian poetry #ontario #sudbury

[kmpoetry]

Newest one, haven’t written in a while

#poetry #canadian poetry #kmpoetry

[poem-today]

A poem by Gwendolyn MacEwen

DARK PINES UNDER WATER

This land like a mirror turns you inward And you become a forest in a furtive lake; The dark pines of your mind reach downward, You dream in the green of your time, Your memory is a row of sinking pines. Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for Although it is good here, and green; You had meant to move with a kind of largeness, You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream. But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper In an elementary world; There is something down there and you want it told.

Gwendolyn MacEwen (1941-1987)

#gwendolyn macewen #canadian poetry #dark pines under water

[gennsoup]

you make me wanna slow dance under moonlight and snowflakes hand tangled in your hair led down into heartbreak and hope

Tenille K. Campbell, I want to taste your language

#Tenille Campbell #nedi nezu #Good Medicine #I want to taste your language #love #love quotes #moonlight #moon #moon quotes #full moon #snowflakes #slow dance #hope #heartbreak #Indigenous literature #Indigenous poetry #poetry #poetry quotes #Canadian literature #Canadian poetry #quotes #quotes blog #literary quotes #literature quotes #literature

[iamdontis]

How do you do it?

Look up at the worst eyes

Take in the worst words

Worst realities

And still

See

All that beauty

I want to see out of your bright eyes

How do you see the best in the people around you

And do it without a doubt in your heart

That the world is a good place

I want to see like that

I want to see the warmth in their hearts

Hidden away behind cold walls

How do you see the love and sacrifice

And ignore the violence

The cruelty

The unfairness of it all

How

Lend me your bright eye

So that I may truly smile

Truly love

Without doubt or mistrust in the men

The women

In my life.

Original by ~ IamDontis

#poetry #dontis #iamdontis #original poetry #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #canadian poetry #mental health #mental health poetry #iad #how #jealousy #seethrough #see the best #eyes #through your eyes #prose poetry #prose

[manwalksintobar]

Turning Twenty-Three  // Anne Michaels

You turned twenty-two in the rain. We walked in rubber boots along Lowther, the shiny street as albumen under streetlamps.

At midnight, the sky suddenly clear we drove your jazz-filled car through cold, pungent streets to the lake where we collected stones by flashlight. The wind wrapped us in its torsions, we couldn’t hear each other although we shouted, wet with star-swallowing waves.

By morning the stones we’d found were dull with air, but I couldn’t forget the smell of the trees’ intimate darkness the scattered sound of the rain’s distracted hands, husks of buds in green pools on the sidewalks.

To love one person above all others is despair, you said, turning twenty-two. Propaganda of the senses, the narrow-minded heart.

We are magnets, averted by our sameness.

Above the corrugated, elastic lake the darkening sky holds out its arms. A thousand miles away, you’re turning twenty-three

I repeat your name, each time different into sand, into moonlight.

Far off, the lake crumbles at its edges, the sky holds out its arms.

#poetry #Anne Michaels #Canadian poetry #birthday poems #23 #sky #Toronto poems #Toronto #Lowther Avenue #West Toronto #rain #love #love poems

[writerharrison]

#canadian poetry #canadian poet #literature #poems #book of poetry #dragonfly

[ammonitetestpatterns]

naomi beth wakan, segues. wolsak & wynn, 2005.

#naomi beth wakan #canadian poetry