Ken Norris : THE ROMANTIC WORDS/RUBY WOUNDS PROJECT

 

 

 

 

When he was pushing thirty, Artie Gold began writing Romantic Words. He thought so highly of the manuscript that he called the book that came before it before Romantic Words.

For a number of odd reasons, Romantic Words never made it into print during Artie’s lifetime. Publishing became difficult and drugs became easy. That’s one way to tell it. There are a multitude of other ways. Long story short, when Artie died at the age of sixty in 2007, Romantic Words remained unpublished.

Endre Farkas and I discussed cobbling together a version of it and including it in The Collected Books of Artie Gold (2010). But we really didn’t have very much to go on. The manuscript was “lost.” In 2012 or 2013, Patrick Hutchinson, who was going through Artie’s papers to organize them for McGill University, found two version of Romantic Words in the literary papers. By 2015 or 2016, Endre, as Artie’s literary executor, had decided to ask George Bowering to edit Romantic Words. And so begins our tale.

By 2018, George had declined the job. He still had too much of his own writing left to do. I toyed with the idea of editing the book myself, and then declined the job too. It was going to be a tough, problematic edit, and I still had too much of my own writing left to do as well.

The pandemic arrives in 2020 and all of life changes. Late in the year, Endre and I hear from George—he’s working on Romantic Words. But he is not editing it—he is collaborating with it. In the life confusion that was plaguing us all, he had put on his writer’s hat, not his editor’s hat.

In this version of Romantic Words/Ruby Wounds, Artie gets the first page and George gets the second. And what George has going on his page is many things. Sometimes it is commentary. Sometimes it is revision. Sometimes it is translation. Sometimes it is a wholesale rewrite. Sometimes it is a moment in awe.

George’s openness as a reader/writer/editor/friend/fanboy allows many things to transpire. It’s a curious book, and there is a genuine dialogue happening between the Artie poems and the George poems. What the reader sees happening is certainly some version of admiration, affection and love.

I think the big question isn’t: why does this project exist? I think the big question is: why don’t we have more books like this? As it stands, it is unique in our literature, in our realm of writing.

Fencing, tennis—the metaphors are there for the back and forth the book produces. Artie, George, Artie, George—it’s an atmosphere of engagement and, occasionally, friendly competition. Sometimes George seeks to explain Artie. Other times he simply says, This is the way I’d do it, and here it is—done.

*

When Artie was working on Romantic Words, Joe Rosenblatt asked him for poems for Jewish Dialog. Artie sent him a batch of poems (as he was prone to do) and Joe selected the poems he wanted. When the issue came out there were all of these R.W. poems with numbers. I am guessing that was Artie's idea, but it might have been Joe's.

Artie gave me a copy of Jewish Dialog (he had spares) and I started flipping through it, saw all of the numbered R.W.s. "Ah, I get it," I said, "R.W.--Romantic Words." 

"It's also Ruby Wounds," Artie said.

"Ruby Wounds?" I asked.

Artie then started telling me about Frank O'Hara's poem "Ode To Willem De Kooning." I looked puzzled, as I often was when Artie was philosophizing about poetry. "Just read it when you get home," he said, and moved along to another life topic, probably involving food. 

When I got home I opened up my copy of The Collected Poems Of Frank O'Hara and found the poem. It's one of those wandering odes of O'Hara's where he is trying to show that he can do Abstract Expressionism in words. The payoff for "ruby wounds" comes at the end of the poem:

A bus crashes into a milk truck
                                                  and the girl goes skating up the avenue
with streaming hair
                               roaring through fluttering newspapers
and their Athenian contradictions
                                                     for democracy is joined
with stunning collapsible savages, all natural and relaxed and free

as the day zooms into space and only darkness lights our lives,
with few flags flaming, imperishable courage and the gentle will
which is the individual dawn of genius rising from its bed

"maybe they're wounds, but maybe they are rubies"
                                                                                   each painful as a sun

                                                                                                              1957

*

To be interested in poetry means, I think, to be willingly engaged in a certain kind of verbal difficulty. I say this as a poet who started out trying to be extremely accessible. But there is something in the abstruseness of a Margaret Avison or an Artie Gold that calls one to a different kind of mission. George loves engaging with that, when poetry threatens to start speaking in tongues. And when, at the age of twenty-four, I met Artie and started reading his poetry, it was something I really had to get used to.

Artie Gold is, by no means, an easy-to-read poet. He deploys vast elements of Surrealism—often. And his syntax is often programmed to confound the most astute grammarian. There are verbal tangles throughout his work. And there are numerous places to get lost in the hopes of being found, in the hope of poetry giving the reader that state of grace that only poetry can deliver.

At times, in this collaborative Romantic Words, Bowering seems quite content and happy to play second violin. He isn’t contesting the poetic space with Artie as much as he is commenting upon Gold’s negotiation of it. At times there is an opportunity to redirect the energy flow, or offer an older and wiser perspective on things (Bowering is eighty-five years old as he is working on the manuscript). George reconfigures some poems on his page as an act of generosity. Occasionally he illustrates a flaw. But he also bows to the flawless when it occurs, which is often. Sometimes only for a sequence of lines, sometimes for an entire startling poem (see R.W. 6)

There are times when I do, in fact, prefer “George’s version”—he has a lifetime of craft and crafting behind him. Sometimes Artie’s poems sputter—like Elmer Fudd trying to talk when he’s excited about something. At these times, George, as an astute reader, a gifted writer, can show a bewildered reader where the poem was trying to go.

There’s something almost arcane about poetry if you are doing it right. It’s shot through with mystery, and its moments of bright clarity are often totally mysterious. This is a great project for me as a reader. It takes me right down into the commas.

In the late 1970s, I knew Romantic Words/Ruby Wounds as a unified working manuscript. I knew it as something that was up for revision. And then, years later, I knew it as a mythic manuscript that had been lost and then was found in Artie’s papers. What it’s now become both mystifies and pleases me.

Under George’s hand, Romantic Words has been divided in two and multiplied by two and has quite possibly entered the realm of works such as After Lorca and Heads of the Town Up to the Aether. It used to be a friend of mine’s poetry manuscript. Now it’s become something else and something totally unique.

Toronto
June 16, 2023

 

 

 

 

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. His latest chapbook, Echoes, recently appeared from above/ground press. He currently resides in Toronto.

 

 

 

 

George Bowering : Dressing Ruby Wounds

 

In an issue of his poetry magazine Mouse Eggs, Endre Farkas published a few of the Ruby Wounds poems and introduced them this way:

I was looking through Artie Gold’s archives at the McGill University library and came across his long lost ms. Romantic Words. Ken Norris and I contemplated getting it published. We agreed on asking George Bowering to write an introduction. George had written introductions to a number of Artie’s books, so we expected that he would agree. What we didn’t expect was what George did with the ms. He engaged in a poetic exchange with Artie’s poems. He wrote his version of Artie’s poems. It was an ekphrastic monologue dialogue. I know there have been poets who have done this as a one or two off. Jack Spicer comes to mind with his engagement with Garcia Lorca. But George did this with (118 +) poems. This is something unique in Canadian (perhaps in all of) poetry. Some of them are “rewrites” of Artie’s poems and some are George’s poems on the topic/theme.

Thank you, Endre.

The more I worked at this peculiar task, the more aware I became of Artie's suspicion that some of the poems were not really part of Romantic Words. So I gathered the typescripts that did not have the handwritten letters RW on them, and named them with a phrase that had come from their author.

Thank you, Artie. It was worth the craziness and death fear and deeply painful beauty.

–––GB

 

 

 

In Spring of 2023 NeWest Press will publish George Bowering’s anthology of English language poets from Wyatt to Avison, with one-page essays on each of the poets, Good Morning Poems.

 

Endre Farkas : Language Matters : with Jean-Paul Murray, Joe Fiorito, Antonio D’Alfonso, Ken Norris + Carolyne Van Der Meer

 

 

This round table discussion about English Language Poetry and Politics in Quebec began with Jean-Paul Murray’s comment (see below) about a round table discussion between Stephen Morrissey, Ken Norris and myself, moderated by Carolyn Marie Souaid, and posted online at periodicities (August 11, 2022). It was joined by Joe Fiorito, journalist poet who lived in Montreal but now resides in Toronto, Antonio D’Alfonso, poet, publisher and musician who was very much involved in the French and English publishing scene in the 70s & 80’s, Ken Norris, American born, who moved to Montreal but now resides in Toronto and Carolyne Van Der Meer who moved to Montreal from Ontario. This round table is more an expression of opinions and experiences than responses to comments by the participants. It is wide ranging that references the past as well as comments on the present as seen and experienced by the contributors.

Jean-Paul Murray: I wonder if Quebec nationalism has torn the heart out of English-language poetry in the province... Would a young F.R. Scott be able to emerge and thrive in that national-tribalist context?

Endre Farkas: Is it something specific in the roundtable (the one moderated by Carolyn Marie Souaid) that made you ask that question?

J-PM: I’m just wondering if all the Quebec poets have moved to Toronto or elsewhere throughout Canada... First thing that came to mind...

EF: There are far more English language poets in Montreal/Quebec/townships environs than during my “salad days”. Most, from what I see, today are more interested and involved with personal identity issues/politics than political ones. I don’t think it concerns them that much because most are comfortable in both languages and mixing with the Francophone poets. Also the Francophone poets are also less uptight about Quebec independence. That seems to be more an ideological dog whistle used by the politicians. In the 70s & 80 most English language poets were not very concerned about language issues because they weren't that fluent in the language, and did not consider them their issue. Ironically, the people that I knew who got involved creatively were allophone poets. Tom Konyves (Hungarian) and Ken Norris (American) created a video poem ‘See/Saw’ that started with the lines “I saw/my country in half”. Tom made at least one other video poem whose title I can’t remember right that dealt with the language issue. I (Hungarian) wrote performance poem piece Face Off/Mise au Jeu, and another videopoem Language Cops & wrote 'Love in Quebec' that explored the relations between the two “solitudes”. Tom Konyves & the other Vehicule poets were involved in a project of putting poems/English and French on the busses in Montreal. When the Bus Company didn’t want to put the English poems on the busses, we created a manifestation in which Frank Scott and Louis Dudek participated. More recently (2013) Carolyn Marie Souaid and I edited a book (Language Matters: Interview with 22 Quebec Poets, published by Signature Editions). We asked them about language and politics in Quebec and how it affected their work. Very few saw it as an issue. I’m curious what role you think English language poets should play in the politics in Quebec today?

J-PM: I was wondering if Montreal/Quebec were still the beating heart of this half continent we call a country, as Hugh MacLennan put it. From what you say, it looks like its “double heart beat and self-moved reciprocation” have grown stronger. Perhaps that’s why the Franco poets are less uptight about independence… maybe that led the way to a greater understanding… I think of the Anne Hébert and Frank Scott translating each other.

Beyond expressing the social spirit of the times, I believe English-language poets can do good work when it comes to speaking about issues facing Quebec anglophones (e.g., higher level of poverty for those who live outside of Montreal). Perhaps mixing a little Richler and Scott. Hard to do without sounding preachy...

EF: I think we Montrealers would like to think so. The best we can do is claim that it once was. There is a very vibrant literary scene but it is very beneath the surface of the skin or consciousness of the city. And really diverse. We can’t throw around names that are nationally recognizable, or even recognizable by most Montrealers, though I’m sure their names are worthy of attention. As for your single/double heart reference, I think the number of hearts beating is much more than two and that may contribute to the difficulty of saying what is a Montrealer, Quebecer and/or Canadian heart. We have gender, cultural, racial, indigenous, age, linguistic (I must have missed some) concerns and divides to see the now and the possible future. I would like to see more social, political (no preachy, heavy handed) poetry. I think the problem is that we Canadian poets look at the local as not having national or global consequences. I think part of the problem and has been, for a while, is that we know too little about our history, of ourselves. I think we are being educated, not so much by schools as by the “others” claiming their voices be heard, their part of the quilt be displayed. I think poets need to listen and educate themselves about the truths and lies that make us who we are. And who we are is still, as it always has been, an evolving answer.

To be a little more local and practical, until the English language media takes a more serious interest in what is going on locally (in literature), unless schools teach more of what is being produced locally and the readership takes more serious interest in local writers, we are not going to matter. And that is not only bad for the local writers but for the Montreal English speaking people who want to live here and celebrate those who reflect them and who give them a mirror to see themselves.

J-P M: But surely the English language is a vehicle for all that diversity... even if the Legault government is doing its best to strangle it ...

EF: You’re right that English language is the vehicle for all that diversity but I think most see that as secondary to the content. And perhaps the best we can hope for in these times from English language poets is that the poems themselves be the proof of the language that is worth speaking up for.

Joe Fiorito: Scott was a brilliant guy, and a product of his strengths and temperament in his time.

will there be another? no. will there be another Richler? no. but will there be others? bet on it, when the time is right…Scott brought about real change with his words... including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms... unacknowledged legislators of the world and all that...

J-PM: yes he did.

Ken Norris: Frank Scott was amazing. It is hard to imagine Canada without him. As Endre knows, when there was a kerfuffle about the first Poetry on the Buses project back in 1979, Scott showed up in the snow and sleet to protest with us. He was eighty years old at the time.

Then, when we got on the “publicity bus,” all of the poems were up, including those in English. That morning certain sections of Bill 101 had been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada as unconstitutional. When the journalists realized that Scott was there, they made a beeline to him to discuss the Supreme Court and Bill 101.

In my memoir, after I describe the English language poets protest, I write “We thought we were just doing Art, but we had wandered into Law and Politics.”

Earlier, in 1977, Tom Konyves and I had collaborated on a videopoem called See/Saw. That piece was all about language politics in Quebec.

And you and I talked about language politics in the Introduction to Montreal English Poetry of the Seventies.

JF: my status: i was an outsider from the start, and in my profession i was a modern migrant worker: N. Ont, Iqaluit, Regina, Montreal, Toronto. With an Italian name. I never belonged, and didn’t exactly want to belong; being on the outside helped me keep my observational instincts sharp; useful for journalism, and poetry…Belonging makes me uncomfortable, perhaps because it means conforming, if only just a little. This may not be helpful. On the other hand, being an English-language writer in Montreal in the early ‘90s made me part of a small gang of outsiders. Mostly I don’t know. My perspective on anything has always been outside looking in, while at the same time trying to understand what it might be like to be on the inside. I know. Not helpful.

Antonio D’Alfonso:
Hello all.
Thank you for thinking of me.
I say this with a grin.
On this nationalist issue I have written and published
in three books and many mags and scholarly papers.
I say this it is because
this roundtable is mostly
about the Vehicule Poets
(whom I read and praised and published)
And their relationship
with the French-language
counterpart. Not about me
or what Guernica was between
1978-2010.
As a publisher and editor,
I think this roundtable could have been
a possible book idea.
By extending the invitation first to
Jean-Paul, and then to Joe Fiorito
who as he said himself,
is not much versed in the issue,
now to me:
I am thankful.
The roundtable raises
a few ideas in my head.
So let me say a few words:
I have written and published
and spent over half a million dollars
on trying to be a French-language
artist. I even made films in French.
Since 1970. I failed.
In 1979 I asked that Cohen
and Layton be Honorary Members
for UNEQ and was violently shut up. I failed.
In 1990 the Académie des lettres
du Québec pretty much kicked me out of Quebec
for being influenced by multiculturalism.
I moved to Toronto and continue to live there
part time. I failed.
A horror story.
G. V. in a washroom
struck my hand and reprimanded me
for being multicultural. Failed.
I learned in 1992 that all the money
I had invested in publishing French-language
books were all paid by me --
I realized I had never received
one penny from the government as a publisher
for the French-language books
I published for over twenty years.
Nationalism is healthy
in Canada, and with nationalism
racism and intolerance galore.
I am allergic to nationalism.
Regardless of the nationalism
expressed
in the writing milieu on the French side,
I made friends.
In 2012 for speaking against
students (carré rouge) waving their nationalist flag
or worse the patriots’ flag
I was fired from my teaching job.
(Court followed. I lost.)
I have been living in poverty
ever since.
If I am to participate
in this roundtable
I could not possibly use my name.
My identity would have to be
totally erased.
I have not been published
in French since my book En italiques (2000).
Which was pretty much banned here.
(The publisher included
a WARNING TO THE READER
note as an introduction.)
Contrary to what you believe,
what is happening today or what this
government says today was written
and thought by
writers and poets and filmmakers
decades ago.
I was present. I quarreled all the time.
And learned to get drunk
to block my ears.
Pound, a fine fascist,
was correct: Poets are the antennae of the State.
These words should suffice
to express my fear.
I have not gone out
in public as a writer since 2012.
I don’t care in what language nationalism comes out
I will speak against it.
I was born here
and never for even one second
felt at home in this country.
Nor in any country.
I do not understand Tradition.
And I am not the only one.
There is not one writer
in French-language Quebec
who has written against
nationalism or their obsession
with language or religion or
territory.
Take care.
Be healthy.
Tony. 

J-MP: I really feel there's an important vein to be mined in this discussion. I like Antonio’s story about the struggle to be bilingual and multi-cultural against a national-tribalist establishment... and Joe Fiorito feeling like an outsider... The battle rages on, or smoulders below the surface. 

This news story kind of illustrates how it unfolds in some corners of Quebec.

Carolyne Van Der Meer: I am not sure I am the best participant for this round table discussion, as my point of view is very different from yours. I came to Quebec in 1990 at the age of 21. I chose Quebec because of the French language, because of Quebecois culture. I grew up in small-town Ontario and hungered to be part of a larger cultural fabric, one that wasn’t steeped in ignorance and small-mindedness. I went to University of Ottawa, initially on a scholarship to study French literature. I eventually switched to English literature because I missed my favourite dead British poets and perhaps just wasn’t ready for what the lettres françaises program had to offer. No matter, my love affair with the French language and with Quebec had begun. I spent the summer of 1988 in the Eastern Townships as an equitation instructor at a kids’ camp and came to Montreal once a week to visit my best friend, who I’d met in my first year at University of Ottawa. Between the Eastern Townships and Montreal, I was hooked, and I knew I wanted to live in Montreal. In 1990, I had a job opportunity here and I took it—instead of moving to Toronto to do Ryerson’s graduate program in journalism. I have no regrets. I met my husband in 1991—and never looked back. My husband is half Quebecois, so I married into the culture. I worked in corporate communications—and was always hired for my English skills. Yes, perhaps I was always “other,” but I fit right in with my francophone colleagues. I became fully bilingual not long after arriving here—and now I live a good part of my life in French. I have many francophone friends, some of them among my closest. French has become a deep part of me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I wasn’t a poet when I got here—that came later. And now, after four books published (one of which is a bilingual collection, for which I translated my own poems into French), I am well integrated into the English poetry scene. My one desire is that the English and French poetry communities mix more. For me, the language you speak doesn’t matter; at the end of the day, what matters is this love of poetry. We need to keep it alive—in all languages. So right here, in Quebec, let’s keep it alive in both French and English. As David Goudreault says, “J’en appelle à la poésie”—this speaks more to me than any language politics.

When I took on the role of Quebec Representative for the National Council of the League of Canadian Poets a couple of years ago, my promise was to work hard to bring the two communities together. During the height of COVID, I edited a chapbook called Les voix du Québec/Voices of Quebec—and there is an intentional equal representation of English-speaking and French-speaking poets in that volume—among them some of the biggest names in French-language poetry today: Denise Desautels, Louise Dupré, Martine Audet and Diane Régimbald, among others. I held a bilingual launch for the chapbook, hosted by Moncton, NB anglophone poet laureate, Kayla Geitzler, as part of her Attic Owl reading series—and anglo and franco poets alike were genuinely pleased to participate in this bilingual event that showcased current English and French poetry. And in August, I was one of two anglophone poets reading among more than 40 francophone poets at La grande nuit de la poésie in St-Venant, organized by Richard Séguin and David Goudreault. I read in both languages, and felt the warm welcome of fellow poets, language aside.

My politics are for poetry. We are all human. Our love of poetry should unite us, not divide us.

AD: This is the bouncing of the ball
against the wall.
In no way, a reaction to anything said above.
I spent the day yesterday replying to
a similar topic to a writer in Italy.
She inquired about the linguistic
laws in Canada.
It seems that Italy is going to pass
a law that will force Italians in South Tyrol
to answer the question:
Are you Italian or German?
If you choose German
the citizen will be forced out
of his home.
German is an official language in Italy
(Tyrol, Venice, and that part of Italy
is German-speaking and also Slovene
and Croatian and Serbian and Ladino,
and the language used by the Jews in that part
of the world: the Kingdom of Venice and Sweden were
the only two countries that received Jews
kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition).
Why do I mention Italy?
Because Italy has only imposed
Italian as an official language
in 2007. It had no official language
before that.
And this law has been
contested violently
by Italians from the left.
Italy has about a dozen
official languages.
The nationalist have tried
in 1923, in 1968, in 1980
to impose Italian on its population.
It is not really working.
Citizenry there is based on flesh and blood,
not the language spoken.
They want to change that.
In Canada, where I was born,
citizenry is based on language,
and not flesh and blood.
I appreciate the adhesion of
first-generation immigrants
to assimilationist practices.
They usually make the finest
countrymen.
I am first-generation born here,
and I raise the issues that
clearly affect my existence.
My parents, though never Canadians,
loved Montreal above all.
The water of Montreal,
to be precise. Interesting.
Since water is becoming an issue
in our world today.
Some historical site
published a few pages of my memoir
this week. Its original title
was Fourth-Class Citizens.
I was forced to change that title.
There are four classes
in this country.
The order is the same
except for order of
the first two
changes depending
on the territory one lives.
Canada is officially (legally)
a bilingual and bicultural country.
This means that only two languages
are legally spoken in this country:
English and French.
The only bilingual province is New Brunswick
(because of the Acadians).
In Quebec, the governments declared
Quebec a unilingual territory.
And recently (two months ago)
the provincial government
declared openly it was against
multiculturalism and multilingualism.
In Quebec, you have therefore:
1. The French-Canadians;
2. The English (from Great Britain);
3. The Amerindians (mostly Francophone);
4. The Others (ethnics).
This is pretty much Law
in Quebec. So there is no such
thing a person like me.
People like me are going
to disappear.
If there is a person like me,
she will soon pass away.
In ten years, the person I am
(persons like me) will no longer
exist in Quebec.
What made me will be erased
from history books. My childhood
neighborhood is being rewritten
in Quebec’s history book.
Now on to Canada (minus Quebec).
There is a growing tension
in the Rest of Canada (RoC).
This bicultural and bilingual law
is in truth starting to bother Canadians.
There are so many
other languages and cultures
in this land, French supremacy
is being questioned.
They are all fourth-class
citizens in Canada.
1. British;
2. French-Canadians (who has equal rights
in the rest of Canada; Britains no longer have
the same rights in Quebec);
3. Amerindians (mostly Anglophone);
4. The Others (ethnic).
Now, of course, if one sees
Quebec as a nation,
then all of this discourse is
of no importance.
If Quebec is a province,
then there are some serious
problems.
I do not believe in a heaven
of writers. I have said it
often, writers are the vehicle
of the government’s agenda.
Poets and novelists is Canada
get their jobs because of the
works they publish.
More like scholarly works
give pay raises to profs.
(A publisher in Canada
actually would ask for a 10%
cut of the raise a prof would
get whenever a book published
would give the prof a raise.
Whether a joke or not,
this has been told to me
by the publishers.)
Gaston Miron often said
in public, We want an Independent Quebec
with the Canada Council grants.
A joke?
I wrote my first book
in 1973 in French.
I learned French in bed
with my first girlfriend.
So my love of French goes
deep. I filmed my first film
in French. I composed my first
songs in French.
Though I was an Anglo-Italic.
I stopped writing French
in 2010 as a political gesture.
I also refuse to appear in
public since Quebec
forces schools in east side of
Montreal where Italians
would send their children to school.
In 1967: Italians were
educated in houses/homes
because they were not
allowed to go to English-language
schools: I just found this
out last year.
I had read about this:
but it is another thing
to actually meet professionals
who had to study
clandestinely in Montreal.
If I am asked to sing
a French-language song today,
I will sing only songs
from France written by immigrants.
In my humble opinion
Canadian literature
that informed me begins with
Patrick Straram and Leonard Cohen.
Regardless of what critics
think of their work,
it is their words
that made me want
to become a writer
in the 1960s.
Anything before that
walks under the shadow
of Britain and France.
Sorry for blabbing
about myself.
But like I said
I represent people
in this city who
are disappearing,
and no one is saying
a thing, and most sadly,
not even the ones concerned.
This is so troubling,
because in fact the
real problem I realize
is me. And not them.
It is I who am I bad citizen
and a bad writer
for writing about all of this stuff. 

J-PM: Very well said... I know how you feel... the English grade school I attended in Trois-Rivières is now an old-folks’ home... Les disparus, c’est nous...

EF: Election season has officially begun. I don’t know if language will be a key issue. A stat did come out before the kickoff saying that the use of French in Montreal has dropped off by one percent. According to the report, the cause is attributed to Quebec’s poor immigration performance in luring francophone speakers to the province. Another is that the immigrants who do come here don’t list English or French as their language spoken at home. So I suspect the CAQ will be touting their Bill 96 as a necessity. This will play well in the rural areas where the French language is not “under attack” but will be propagandised as such. In Montreal, the multilingual reality will continue to be the rule. There will be challenges to the bill. Klein’s successful-failure of a poem ‘Montreal’ (1948) is an attempt to integrate the two languages into a poem. Lucien Francoeur and Jean Paul Daoust, two poets of my generation, did/are doing something similar on the French side although their integration was a cultural Quebécois/American mix. But I think Carolyne’s description of her experience in Quebec/Montreal is the future: the many solitudes will marry their joys and troubles but their poetry will travel parallel and separate paths. It’s the reality of language. It is both a wall and a bridge. The real challenge is to have people who can and want to read the poems.

CVDM: I agree that language can be both a wall and a bridge. So far, it’s always been a bridge for me—and I’ll continue working towards keeping it that way. This is not to say that I am not aware of—and disturbed by the issues around language—but I prefer to focus on all the opportunities for connection, on the ways that the language of poetry can bring us together, not drive us apart.

AD:

I wrote Babel and published
a four language poem.
It works but this sort of text
serves no purpose
beyond tickling the knowledgeable
reader.
Not sure
what to add!
Carolyne, we will see
what happens
by trying to connect those
in the nationalist divide.
ciao

One thing is clear:
it is I who is the mad one.
I have this ideal in my head,
which I think is out there
in this universe. But it is imaginary.
And it is not nationalism.

Nationalism
is everywhere. Some praise it
and others want to get rid of it. 

But those who are against it
might not really be anti-nationalist
but imperialists. 

With the collapse of right and left wing
politics, discussion about matters of tribes,
nations, language, religion, countries,
have not really moved off the pages
of some philosophers. 

The only thing I would like to say
is that this entire talk
cannot move beyond
because we are all
children of 19th century
concepts of social constructs.

Max Stirner, Bakunin and Kroptokin's idea of Mutual Aid
(stateless collectivities) have not been able
to fully develop: Guernica the city (this is why
I called my press Guernica) was the only
anarchist city in Europe. 

It was quickly destroyed by nationalists
(Mussolini (who invented the idea), Hitler (who
perfected the horror), and Franco who led
us to our modern societies.

I feel that I live this province
has become a dangerous prison.
This is my feeling. I was born here,
I left this place, and for some stupid
reason came back, and can't move out
because I need to help my mother
who is 93. 

Ok. Enough. Forgive me for
this digression.

I have said too much.
Again thank you,
and please forgive me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poet, novelist, essayist, translator, Antonio D’Alfonso has published more than fifty books (including translations) and has made five feature films. He is the founder of Guernica Editions which he managed for thirty-three years before passing it on to new owners in 2010. For his writings, he won the Trillium Award, the Bressani Award. His film Bruco won the New York Independent Film Award. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. In 2016, he received a Honorary Doctorate from Athabasca University. His new film, TATA (Daddy), was released in July 2020. The Two-Headed Man: Collected Poems 1970-2020 was published in July 2020. He has started on youtube a series of Conversations with artists and producers.

 

Endre Farkas, poet / playwright/author/ was born in Hungary. He is a genre fluid writer who has published two novels, twelve books of poetry and two plays. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and Slovenian. He has read and performed widely in Canada, the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and has created performance pieces that have toured across the country and abroad. He has also translated the poetry of Bari Karoly. His book How To was nominated for the AM Klein poetry award in 1983.  He is the two-time winner of the CBC radio Poetry “Face Off” Competition. His collaborative book and video poem Blood is Blood was the winner of Zebra’s International Poetry Film Festival (Berlin) 2012. His novel Home Game was shortlisted for the Mavis Gallant Prize for Fiction. His latest book of poetry, I will Tell You One More Thing was just published by Ekstasis Editions in 2022.

Joe Fiorito was born in Fort William, Ontario, in 1948. He is a veteran journalist, having worked first as a CBC Radio producer, and then as a city columnist for the Montreal Gazette, The Globe&Mail, The National Post and the Toronto Star newspapers. He won the National Newspaper Award for Columns in 1995; the Brassani Prize for Short Fiction in 2000; and the City of Toronto Book Award in 2003. He is the author of eight books, including two collections of poetry. He is married and lives in Toronto.

A certified translator, researcher and communications specialist, Jean-Paul Murray has translated nineteen books. From 1995 to 1998, he was managing editor of Cité libre, a magazine founded by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. His previous translations for Ekstasis Editions include Robert Lalonde’s Seven Lakes Further North, Little Eagle with a White Head, Louis Hamelin’s Betsi Larousse and André Major’s The Devil’s Wind. In the coming months, Ekstasis will publish his translation of René Frégni’s Je me souviens de tous vos rêves. From 2001 to 2009, he was speech writer for the Speaker of the Senate and senior policy advisor to two Leaders of the Opposition in the Senate. He lives in Chelsea, Quebec and is secretary of the Gatineau Park Protection Committee. 

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Creative Writing and Canadian Literature for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

 

 

 

 

 

Carolyne Van Der Meer is Montreal-based journalist, public relations professional and university lecturer who has published articles, essays, short stories and poems internationally. She is the author of Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (WLUP, 2014), Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017) and Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du coeur à l’âme : La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes (Guernica Editions, 2020). This book, for which she translated her own poems into French, was awarded second prize in the Poetry Category of the Catholic Media Association's 2021 Annual Book Awards and was a finalist in the Specialty Books category of The Word Guild’s 2021 annual Word Awards. Her fourth book, a full-length poetry collection, Sensorial, was released by Inanna in May 2022.