The Cultural Olympiad (as far as poetry goes)
February 14th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I’ve been somewhat ambivalent towards the cultural Olympiad thus far, not for any personal reasons beyond not being interested enough to follow along carefully. My wife has an iPod app that allows her to follow various events, both athletic and cultural, so perhaps I will start there.
I watched a portion of the opening ceremonies on Friday (I fell asleep, thankfully, before the Gretzky/truck debacle. I mean, really, what kind of planning was that anyway?). I stepped out of the room for a second, no doubt to feed my RSS feed addiction, when my wife called me back to the TV to watch a poem being presented as one of the events at the Olympic opening. Shane Koyczan had a great spot doing a spoken word piece about Canadian identity called “We Are More” and, I have to say, though I’m not usually into spoken word poetry, I enjoyed the performance. The poem was uncomplicated enough to grasp the ear of many viewers who might not have been receptive to poetry, but appealed enough to the patriotic side of the country to allow the event to go over well.
I am not familiar with Koyczan’s work and this was another reason I wanted to tune in and if I can find some of his other poems easily enough I may look into it. Regardless of how well-known he was before the opening night of the Olympiad, he was much more well-known shortly after:
His performance of an abridged version of his poem We Are More during the Olympic opening ceremonies has suddenly made him a star. He woke up to 600 messages in his inbox. He struck a chord with the likes of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Entertainment Weekly. And in the half-hour he spent with a Globe reporter, he was approached 12 times by autograph seekers and well-wishers, including children, teenagers and a police officer.
That’s not bad. It’s not every day a poet, or artist of any kind, really, gets 600 messages in the old inbox. The olympic platform, undoubtedly, has contributed to this poet’s career. Perhaps we will hear more from him in the near future.
Another poet who has received some notice from the olympic spectacle is Brad Cran, Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, who is, ironically enough, not part of the spectacle. If you follow the Olympics you may be aware that a while back, VANOC sent a directive to Vancouver Public Library staff telling them to cover the names of organisations that are not sponsoring the Olympics, to do the same with rented sound equipment, and, “If you have a speaker/guest who happens to work for Telus, ensure he/she is not wearing their Telus jacket, as Bell is the official sponsor.” This enraged a number of people in information sciences and has been discussed and debated since the memo was first sent out in January. This sort of activity does, in effect, go against the ideals that public libraries uphold, namely that no information be censored in any way and that the public has full access to information that remains untampered-with. Upon first hearing about it, I had a lengthy and frustrating discussion with my wife (a librarian) about the possibilities of censorship that such an action on VANOC’s part can produce were such attempts not kept in checked.
Brad Cran, for these and other reasons, has opted out of participating in the Olympic celebrations as Vancouver’s literary ambassador. It is refreshing to see an artist take a stand based on principle and basic human values, even when doing so involves passing up an opportunity to promote his work. I’ve been debating what effect such an action could actually have, since poets at the best of times are not front and centre in the minds of the country’s people (neither apparently are Canadian authors in general). Among the ranks of writers there is much discussion of this issue, but I’ve not heard much of it mentioned outside of this context, though I believe this is changing. I think Cran’s stand is getting the attention it has due to the fact that he is not just a Vancouver poet, but the city’s poet laureate and an official government employed artist. Some may wonder why a person employed by the city has issues with the way VANOC has been organizing the events surrounding the 2010 Olympiad. The other fact that requires consideration is that there is now a world stage for this controversy where a larger population has to come along for the ride and in doing so have been made aware of the issues. Recently a former official of the Salt Lake Winter Games has slammed current Olympic organizers for these attempts at what amounts to censorship. Cran’s choice to not take part publically may do some good in light of such concerns.
I think it’s essential that he has made a choice and acted on it and I support him in his decision. It’s easy to talk tough at these times, but few of us have the strength of character to hold true to what our reason discerns.
Prescription Poetry
February 9th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The history of poetry seems littered with references to the biographical, the ways in which experience can influence the product of one’s writing, or even the impetus for that writing. With our interest in the dark and twisted sides of human personalities, it’s no wonder mental and emotional stress and instability has taken a prominent place in our understanding of writers’ personal lives. There are many writers who, for one reason or another, have experienced duress of this nature: T.S. Eliot checked into a facility for a mental break down, Alfred Tennyson suffered from lifelong bouts of depression, others still resorted to suicide (John Berryman and Sylvia Plath to name just a couple).
I had read somewhat recently (in a source I can no longer remember) that of all types of writers poets live the shortest lifespans (novelists rejoice!). This seems a strange statement to make, but when one focuses on such considerations as those mentioned above, it becomes easier to acknowledge. Is there some way the process of writing poetry (or prose for that matter) is therapeutic? Do writers find solace in composing their inner most thoughts and arranging their personal philosophies or approaches to life in words on the page?
When I was younger and first beginning to explore poetry, I gained the general impression, primarily from amateur writers and people who read some amount of poetry, that writing is often a kind of personal therapy, a way of exploring what one’s issues are and how these can or should be handled. As time went on, this explanation did not seem enough for me. Therapeutic writing became something less than desirable for me, almost as though such an activity was far too withdrawn and personal as to make the product of that writing interesting to anyone other than the person who created it. This was an early opinion before I began writing seriously myself.
I had written one or two “poems” (I call them poems in the flimsiest sense of the word) back in high school, primarily as school work. I found little fun in this at the time and for several years afterward I wrote nothing of a creative nature. It wasn’t until the death of a close friend (the first death I’d experienced close to me) that I attempted poetry again. I don’t believe I can adequately state why I suddenly began to write poems, nor did I know why an overwhelming urge came over me to reopen a relationship with them. The best I can do is reference some kind of inward navel gazing that sought to come to terms with the loss of a great friend. Poetry seemed a way to lay my thoughts, experiences and memories on the table for study, to make some sense of a period of chaos and uncertainty that, for a time, was difficult to cope with. Afterall, didn’t many of the great poets write of lost friends and family members, hard times and inner strife? Tennyson’s In Memoriam is perhaps one of the most accomplished of these and, having been exposed somewhat to this by my father (a lover of Tennyson), it was natural that my reading would come to focus there for some time.
Those early poems were no more than pathetic attempts at writing something of meaning. I had neither the writing skill or breadth of reading to produce anything worth saving, let alone something to show others. It was that sudden wish to fix how I felt, the therapy of it, that produced for me a strong bond with poetry and poured the foundation for what has turned out to be a love of the power of words. Poetry, I think, needs something to kick-start a relationship with you, whether it be a death, a loss, a moment of utter bliss or some personal or intellectual revelation. It can be difficult and hard to handle at times and to harness poetry’s wonder there needs to be a personal investment on the part of the poet, an honest and deep-felt engagement with an intricate and many faceted mode of expression that, once approached carefully, has benefits that can’t be seen beforehand.
Sure, poetry can be therapeutic to some extent. I no longer think of it in these terms, as I now write for other reasons that are equally difficult to articulate. Poetry has since become one of the most important parts of my life, one that serves as entertainment, hobby, and even contributes to my identity and understanding of self. The need for personal peace certainly can have its rewards.
