Phil Hall : Voting

 

 

 

 

My parents weren’t political—they reacted without much planning.

My father stayed in school through grade three—my mother had gotten her matriculation—grade eight.

Even a Farmer’s Almanac in the outhouse was held away and studied like a binding document—warily.

I liked how they were when they voted—to them voting was serious—they had been invited to participate—each X was an equal X—they understood the fairness of that.

Voting was also a private gesture—theirs each alone—and also somewhat of a game between them.

The week before voting day—they would try to trick each other into revealing who they planned to vote for.

They thought that if they voted differently their votes would cancel each other out—so then there was no reason to bother voting.

My father would make jokes about which politician my mother secretly fancied.

My mother watched my father closely—she knew the kinds of men he respected and the kinds of men he hated.

This was the late 50s / early 60s—rural Ontario—Diefenbaker—he wasn’t a good-looking man—but the protruding teeth and the wavy hair and his tallness all spoke in his favour.

He had an impressive—even legendary—memory—and he could be funny—sly in his comebacks.

He respected everyone he spoke to—both of my parents admired that about him—it was easy to imagine Diefenbaker as real—as someone people actually knew—out west.

Dief’s second wife was a prairie school teacher—with expensive hair because she had to go to so many ceremonies. Her name was Olive.

Pearson was more like the Veterans Affairs representative who came by for tea and a smoke every few years to see how my father was doing.

Pearson was certainly a bureaucrat—but he didn’t seem two-faced.

He was like a teacher—a preacher—or a relative who had moved away and done well—so that no one knew about him or his family anymore...

It was hard to tell which of these men my mother liked best—and it did come down to personalities—not policies or parties—I think Diefenbaker was the one for her—though she’d never say.

My father voted as if he were feeding some animal through a fence and was mindful of his fingers—but he voted—he was thankful for his disability pension.

Although he hadn’t earned it by getting overseas with the other boys. A drunken fight in a park on the eve of shipping out had left him with a leg broken in seven places. Shame.

My mother voted—she got dressed up to do so—as if she had an appointment with an official.

She wanted to behave appropriately—settle the issue—and get home again without embarrassment—and without making my father angry.

She didn’t have much that was her own—there was Bingo—there was her daytime show The Edge of Night—and she had this—after 1922 in Ontario most women could vote.

On election day—my parents would leave in the car together—slightly teasing each other—it was good to see—and rare—that affection.

We kids stayed home a half hour alone—mind yourselves—the polling station was at Angus Martin’s small house on the way to town.

When they returned—it was as if all of the Xs in the boxes didn’t seem equal anymore. My parents seemed smaller after voting—a bit used—duped.

The results weren’t followed. All that governing—the Government—had nothing to do with us.

Democracy means that you matter—one day every four years.

But when Churchill died in 1965—our old TV was left on all day—it had doors that could shut away the screen—there was still something indiscreet about a TV.

A train carrying the great man’s coffin trundled repeatedly through British villages—hamlets and whistle-junctions.

A short trip—from London to Oxford—I’ve learned since—but repeated and repeated—in black and white that day. To endless commentary.

It annoyed me—the ritual—the repetition—the preempting of my Westerns. The whole day had a before-you-were-born tone to it—which I also resented.

By then, my mother and father had already had the myths kicked out of them—they had no power. Or trust.

They didn’t renew themselves in books—the way I have learned to do. They weren’t religious.

They weren’t community-minded folks. They fought with family—but had few friends otherwise.

Their genealogy had been lost—poorhouse disgraceful—unimportant officially—they had no connection to the British Isles.

The play in them was almost gone—except when found in drink—or if babies were held.  And I saw it a bit on election day.

Each time there’s an election—that old simple myth of the community circle—or of the town hall meeting that might really change things—still flares up in faces.

Again for awhile there’s that old—just maybe! So we pretend to believe in the hope we see briefly in people around us—and others try to see the same in us.

On election day—or at funerals—the possibility of that discredited idea: shared responsibility for the collective—is awakened.

Sure—representation past the local is too dissipated not to be a trick—our choices are manipulated and turned to math—to stats.

We are duped by fanfare—then as now—and our sloppiest hold-over beliefs are counted—banked on—bought and sold.

In the English countryside—for Churchill—people lined the tracks—they made V-for-Victory signs—they cried and waved goodbye—and waved goodbye—all day...

Still—here in Canada—from Long Beach to St John’s—we hunger for public servants who remember our first names—and the names of our children now grown.

We expect humble dignitaries—who ask after our parents—and are sorry to hear—real people—to represent us as real—and even as sacred—against all that isn’t.

My walking stick has punctuated the road to your door—this onion in my hand is for you—it is from my garden—thank you for your confidence in me—how can I help?

Though it sounds maudlin to say so—there are no candidates like that anymore. If there ever were.

We each might hold up a more recent example or two: Tommy Douglas, Elizabeth May...

My father—as he watched Churchill’s train go by—looked angry and ashamed—as if he were being challenged and failing.

My mother stood in the doorway—watching—in her hands a tea towel and a wet glass—not drying it.

 

 

Ph . Otty Lake . 2025

 

 

 

 

 

Phil Hall's [photo credit: Paul Elter] most recent books are Vallejo's Marrow and Devotion (both in 2024). He has also recently published a children's book, Searchers (2025). Guthrie Clothing—the Poetry of Phil Hall (2015) is available from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

 

rob mclennan : Doubt is Form : 2025 VERSeFest interviews: Phil Hall

  

 

 

 

 

Phil Hall’s [photo credit: Paul Elter] most recent books are Vallejo’s Marrow, The Green Rose (with Steven Ross Smith), and Devotion (all in 2024). He has also recently published, with Margaret Miller, the art book Searchers (2025). Guthrie Clothing—the Poetry of Phil Hall (2015) is available from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. He is proud of the poets he has collaborated with, and of those whose editor he has been. He lives near Perth, Ontario.

Phil Hall reads in Ottawa on Friday, March 28 as part of VERSeFest 2025.

rob mclennan: I’m curious as to how your poems have evolved, working these days in what could be termed “essay-poems,” attending elements of the catch-all around various thoughts around your reading and writing practice. Basically, how did you get to The Ash Bell (2022) from where you poems were, say, during the days of The Unsaid (1992) or Hearthedral: A Folk-hermetic (1996)?

Phil Hall: I have worked to modify the sequence poem, as developed by Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser, in an attempt to avoid magazine verse—the set poem with its controlling title.

This has involved a mistrust of common metaphor, which is the simile’s shadow. Instead I rely on what I might call historic or hermetic metaphor—its warrens inside the etymology of each word.

Most words, sat with long enough, exude an aura of bewilderment that has evolved from the routes it has taken to be a word. And accident—even error—are important too.

I have developed a mistrust of the poem as heightened experience or precious performance, in favour of a plain-saying that has folk roots, but wants its own private language.

Thus, I now favour the notebook entry, for it is obscure by being acutely specific, and flourishes because it has no audience—I am not interested in the high hat of the poem as poem.

And I favour collage instead of rhetoric. These elements (absence of common metaphor / folk roots / notebook entries / collage) have brought me to the essay-poem.

Where I can say contradictory things abundantly, and less “artistically”.  Also, I make baroque (accumulative) sequences that are revised to appear random.

At least this is what I think I am doing. And these tendencies have also led me, unexpectedly, to trust more and more the sacred logic of dreams.

In my latest book, Vallejo’s Marrow, there are dream-trusting sections, but also daily notebook entries.

My process is a search for honest and complex extended forms. I disagree with “catch-all”.

rm: Curious. I meant “catch-all” only in terms of how your poems allow for an expansiveness that can contain multitudes, even contradictory ones. I mean, the density of your poems is quite incredible; you manage to cover a wide slate of references, ground and thought, far broader in scope, it seems, than most of your contemporaries. Do I make too much of this?

Ph: Sorry, I guess I’m defensive about “catch-all” because it can be an excuse for laziness. I work at sounding like Stein meets Carl Sandburg, then at getting home from both...

The accidental is not lazy. The incidental is not lazy. Mouthy-earthy is good. To be as inclusive as soil.

And when I speak of the baroque it is the organization—the form of over-doing it—that attracts me, not a glinting hodgepodge.

There are poets whose catch-all precociousness says: Look at the diverse items I can juggle at once. This doesn’t suit me because the emphasis is on the poet’s skill.

The poem should not be a venue for showing off, and only beginning poets mistake the poem as a way to garner praise.

It is not easy for me to be casual or random—when I am actually casual or random in my writing, I can’t stand what I’ve written.

My natural affinities want control. But the obviously controlled poem disappoints me too.

In such a poem it seems someone is pulling a number on me. Or worse still, if I’ve written it, I am pulling a number on myself: the sinkhole of many zeroes.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve been trying for years to do whatever it is—and sometimes it works out! (Can I say this in an interview, after poet-splaining so much!)

When I am satisfied with the poem’s syllable texture I leave it alone and make another, then fit them together, if that might suit them...

I say in Vallejo’s Marrow: “Doubt is form”. Surety is a killer—the poem can wear a wise costume, or a dunce costume, but its birthday suit is doubt.

Doubt, and a ranging, gathering curiosity. Plus, I find that what the poem brings when invited is a hint of slyness that doesn’t come from me...

but from an accumulation of momentum and pressure—from where? Maybe from Tradition, centuries of compulsion, the folk-ways, a multilingual lyric urge...

My favourite explorer is Viola da Gamba.

rm: I am quite fond of the sense of not knowing what one is doing, as that, as I’ve heard, is when one actually explores. It is those that act certain of what they’re doing I’m always wary of. Through such, how do you see your current work? Do your books remain separate, self-contained projects, or steps in and across a wider continuum? How do your books, seemingly each composed with and through a singular thought-line, find their shapes in comparison to each other?

Ph: I want to put this question in context—it is March 1^st at Otty Lake, it is snowing, and colder weather is due tomorrow.

Yesterday that dangerous pig in Washington revealed himself to be Putin’s secret weapon. He attacked Ukraine like a schoolyard bully with a bomb.

Meanwhile, I had breakfast in Perth with John Steffler, and later went for a hike with Chris Turnbull into an abandoned mica mine near here. There were deer on the road. We are all scared.

At Home Hardware they are selling Snowball Molds! Get a perfect snowball every time!

I am re-reading Janet Malcolm’s book Reading Chekhov. And so have written a poem called “Chekhov”. Here it is, my latest, still cooling:

 While I hold it open
this book I am reading
  has a long shadow
down its inner spine
  where the pages curve
& are held awhile by glue

 I worked in a book factory once
I saw the folio beheaded

 my father is tracing & cutting
a gasket out of a cereal box
  my mother is sewing & braiding
a rag rug worse for wear
  what Boxer the old dog is saying
to the groundhog stomach
  between his front paws in the yard
sounds dire & expeditious

 to find my next poem
I will have to walk away
  from even the glow
of the nearest town
  past the last farm light
into illiteracy again

Like Tom Raworth, I like to take a day’s accumulated interest-bits and allow them to be one poem. So John and Chris will recognize elements of our conversations from yesterday in this one.

If what is needed is defiance, where is it in this poem—I suppose it suggests a defiance by retreat, away from electricity and civic shame, into silence or a growl or privacy. The defiance of reading!

I accept what doesn’t seem to fit or work together, and I see what I can make from it all.

As Paul Metcalfe says: “The only real work is keeping things from falling together too soon.”

The news is not good—from outside and inside, my poems respond, despite themselves. And my books change necessarily too. 

They each represent a period of focus. Preoccupations. Heal awhile here, hide awhile there.

When I finish a notebook, I put elastic around it so that all the insert scraps can’t fall out, then I find another and keep going...

If I repeat myself it is in the way of refrains in old ballads. My spleen calls to a scrub cedar, then the scrub cedar answers in its own language. Then they sing the chorus together...

We might say that each of my books is a series of field recordings in the tradition of Helen Creighton and Mike Seeger.

I have been listening to what seems to need listening to...no great claims. Attentiveness.

What I hear is despair and resolution, defiance and panic, avoidance and misguided trust. In me, and out here.

But also—a communal belief in daily routines that have always been welcomed as love.

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Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan [photo credit: Marc Perez] currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include the poetry collection Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). This fall, University of Calgary Press will be publishing his poetry collection the book of sentences, a follow-up to the book of smaller (2022). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.