folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
One
– may make – and – turn – for the – Nature – of –
hope
– and the – thin – green bottles – by a – reasoning – to
the
– way of – things – that are – no longer – opportune.
Not
making – but – moving – a pen – on – the radius –
with
– the game – that says – I – am alone – of – our watching.
That
– which – merely traces – will – have it – and – so – have us –
on
– the nine parts – which – has shown – our omens –
to
all – the – additional – figures.
As a process poet, my usual thing is to sift, sort or read-through subject texts in order to generate a basic vocabulary from which I can create a poem. In the past I would sometimes revisit or reuse these vocabularies, but over the last couple of years I’ve become more considered and more intentional about this – rearranging, reformatting and re-interrogating these sorted texts – seeing if I missed anything with my first runs through the words, or looking for other ideas, approaches or angles that could uncover or create meanings or soundings. I’ve been finding that taking these repeated runs at the same material – especially if I bring a different perspective or consideration to the operation (aural, visual, breath, rhythmic, etc) – has allowed me to come up with some interesting patterns, translations and interpretations, and to illustrate possibilities that weren’t immediately obvious (at least not to me). It’s sort of a funhouse mirror effect with words. Essentially, I suppose, I’m proving to myself how much potential there is to create new meaning out of old meaning, and how varied it can be.
By way of illustration, these two pieces come from two separate attempts to mine material out of texts that I’d originally sifted (from Margaret Atwood and John Dee) to use for my entry in the 2022 edition of the 2 Day Poem Contest. After writing the contest poem – and then rewriting it after the contest was over – I revisited the raw material with an eye to fragmentation, space and breath… which resulted in the first poem here. I then took another run at the same material, but focused on how I’d selected the text in this previous operation, and on what had been ignored and why… which produced this second, more visually organized piece.
To me, there seems to be great potential in this approach: to create mountains of different and interesting meanings out of original poetic molehills… all of which appeals to my sense of thoroughness.
Grant Wilkins is an occasional poet, printer and papermaker who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he’s working on another one in Art History. He lives in Ottawa on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.
