A poem a day for National Poetry Month
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/04/2016 (3703 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
When the late Winnipeg poet Robert Kroetsch asked “How do you grow a poet?” in Seed Catalogue (1986), he was being both silly and serious.
Silly, because the narrator’s father, a farmer, answered the question with:
Son, this is a crowbar.
This is a willow fencepost.
This is a sledge.
This is a roll of barbed wire.
This is a bag of staples.
This is a claw hammer.
The idea was that practical people had no use for lines and stanzas, images and metaphors. The idea was that most parents would be horrified to hear their children say they wanted to be writers, or, worse, poets.
Serious, because Kroetsch wanted to know: could farmers’ sons and bank clerks and factory workers be artists too? For generations, Manitobans had been exporting grain and importing art from Ontario and Europe. Could Manitobans write and publish poems about Manitoba? Would anyone be interested?
The narrator’s father had an answer for that too:
First off I want you to take that
crowbar and drive 1,156 holes
in that gumbo.
And the next time you want to
write a poem
we’ll start the haying.
Thirty years later, Kroetsch is dead and the era of the small family farm is all but over. And while Manitoba’s writing and publishing community doesn’t have 1,156 poets, if you drive over to McNally Robinson Booksellers any evening in March, April, or May, you’ll probably find a poet launching her book.
What’s more, there are long-standing poetry slams and open mics and Winnipeg regularly sends teams to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.
Thirty years later, April is known throughout North America as National Poetry Month (or NPM). Across Canada, there will be readings and launches and celebrations of poetry.
The NPM in the WFP Project is Manitoba’s celebration. We’ll be featuring 20 Manitoba poets, some from the city and some from the country, some who used to live here and some who have stayed here their all live-long lives, silly poets and serious poets.
If you’re counting, that’s one poem for every weekday in April, starting on Monday, April 4. You can find the poems below.
The theme for the 2016 edition of National Poetry Month is “The road.”
Kroetsch had something to say about that too:
This is a prairie road.
This road is the shortest distance
between nowhere and nowhere.
This road is a poem.
It was an honour to read enormous sheaves of Manitoba poems and to pick a handful to share with you.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her second collection of poetry, Stowaways, won the 2015 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
Heading home
Posted:
Sarah Klassen began writing poetry when she was teaching English at River East Collegiate. The most recent of her seven collections of poetry is Monstrance and she has also published one novel, The Wittenbergs. Klassen lives in Winnipeg and reads the Winnipeg Free Press.
Purple City
Posted:
Steve Locke is a Winnipeg writer, poet and arts educator. His work has appeared in CV2, Prairie Fire, and Poetry is Dead magazines, as well as with him on stage at various spoken word festival and community stages across the country.
Transmission
Posted:
Rachel Carlson is a Red River College Creative Communications student with a passion for writing and media production. Her book reviews have appeared online in The Winnipeg Review and in print with Herizons magazine.
confession
Posted:
Rosanna Deerchild is an award-winning Cree author and broadcaster. Her family is from the O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation located near South Indian Lake, Manitoba, but she grew up in Thompson, Manitoba. She has worked for a variety of Indigenous newspapers and major networks for over 15 years, including APTN, CBC Radio and Global. Her debut poetry collection, this is a small northern town (Muses’ Company), won the 2009 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, and she launched her second book, Calling Down the Sky (Bookland Press) in 2015. She is a co-founder and a member of the Indigenous Writers Collective of Manitoba. She currently lives in Winnipeg and works as the host of Unreserved on CBC Radio One.
Vermillion anthers
Posted:
Basma Kavanagh is a poet, visual artist, and letterpress printer originally from Nova Scotia who recently relocated from Brandon, Manitoba to Carbonear, Newfoundland. She produces artist's books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. She is the author of the chapbook A Rattle of Leaves (Red Dragonfly Press, 2012), the collections Distillō (Gaspereau Press, 2012), and Niche (Frontenac House Press, 2015). Kavanagh’s poem Coda, about a world after humans, was a finalist for the 2014 CBC/Canada Writes Poetry Prize.
Failed State, 2007
Posted:
Maurice Mierau is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Autobiographical Fictions. His memoir Detachment won the 2016 Kobzar Literary Award. He lives in Winnipeg.
Pearls before Swine
Posted:
Marika Prokosh is a Winnipeg writer. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2, Lemon Hound, Poetry Is Dead, and The Toast.
Long time no see
Posted:
Originally from Grand Rapids, Manitoba, Lynnel Sinclair is a Cree/Métis writer. She is a member of the Indigenous Writers Collective of Manitoba. Her publications include The Indigenous Writers Collective of Manitoba Presents New Voices and Kwe: Standing with our Sisters (Penguin Books).
Franklin Carmichael
Posted:
Jonathan Ball writes fiction, poetry, screenplays, and criticism and teaches literature, film, and writing in Winnipeg. Visit him online at JonathanBall.com, where he writes about writing the wrong way.
separation anxiety
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Chimwemwe Undi has been a part of Winnipeg’s poetry scene for the last few years, primarily through spoken word and slam poetry, but also as the coordinator of the Speaking Crow Open Mic and board member for CV2. She has poems forthcoming in The Rusty Toque.
The Dream of the Hybrid Electric Woman
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K.I. Press is a Winnipeg writer. Her fourth book of poetry, Exquisite Monsters, came out with Winnipeg’s Turnstone Press in 2015. She teaches in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.
Instructions On How To Secure Your Role As The Victim In A Horror Film
Posted:
Adam Petrash is a writer from Winnipeg. He’s the author of the novella, The Ones to Make it Through (Phantom Paper Press 2015), and his work has appeared in places such as After the Pause, CHEAP POP, Devolution Z, Lemon Hound, Luna Luna Magazine, Spacecraft Press, and WhiskeyPaper.
Lights home for daughter
Posted:
David Yerex Williamson lives next to the Nelson River in Norway House, Manitoba with his family and three orphaned dogs. When not writing, David shovels a lot of snow, cuts fire wood, and works for the University College of the North. His work has appeared in Aesthetica, Quint, and Contemporary Verse 2.
What You Can’t Take With You (for Mom)
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Shirley Camia is a broadcaster and journalist, born in Winnipeg to first-generation Filipino immigrants. She has traveled throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, sleeping alongside the rice fields of rural Japan and falling in love with Canada's far north. She lives and writes in Toronto.
Traveling without moving
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Born in Saskatchewan, Lori Cayer has made Manitoba her home since the third grade. She is the author of three volumes of poetry: Dopamine Blunder (Tightrope Books, 2016), Attenuations of Force (Frontenac House, 2010), Stealing Mercury (The Muses’ Company, 2004), which won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book in Manitoba in 2004. In 2005 Lori won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. She served many years as poetry editor for Contemporary Verse 2 and currently sits as secretary on the National Council of the League of Canadian Poets.
Swamp Fire (1862)
Posted:
Lauren Carter is the author of Swarm, named one of CBC’s Top 40 books that could change Canada, as well as Lichen Bright, a poetry collection. She has recently completed Migration, a collection of poems exploring ancestry, relocation and infertility, a selection of which was long-listed for the CBC Literary Prizes and won first prize in the Room 2014 Poetry competition. Currently, she's at work on two novels and a short story collection while working as a creativity coach in The Pas, Manitoba. Visit www.laurencarter.ca
Mohawks and Coffee
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KittyKittie is a woman of color and cancer survivor: “The work I have submitted is a body of work that expresses my musing of my illness, mortality, survival and much needed sense of humour. There is a side of cancer that no one wants to talk about and that is the impact it has on a person’s life, state of mind thus effecting the rate of recovery and or survival. I hope through my work someone somewhere will find comfort in my words and find the strength to carry on, no matter what is going in their lives.”
Folding yourself into the car you drive
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Born in Saskatchewan, Sue Sorensen is a writer of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction and also an English professor at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. Her novel, A Large Harmonium (2011), won Best First Book at the Manitoba Book Awards. Her poetry has been published in Room, CV2, Prairie Fire, and the Oolichan collection Desperately Seeking Susans (2012). She is the editor of West of Eden: Essays on Canadian Prairie Literature (2008) and author of an academic study, The Collar: Reading Christian Ministry in Fiction, Television, and Film (2014).
groundhog
Posted:
Dennis Cooley grew up in Saskatchewan and has lived most of his life in Winnipeg. The “groundhog” poem comes from the bestiary, a collection of animal poems he is working on.
Parting gifts
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An academic by day and poet by night (or sometimes vice versa), Kaitlyn Boulding is originally from rural Manitoba and studied at the University of Winnipeg before obtaining an undergraduate and graduate degrees in Classics from Dalhousie University. Her work has been published in the GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine, Fathom, The Lyre, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Juice.
History
Updated on Friday, April 15, 2016 3:14 PM CDT: Adds new photo.