EPB 003:
The Catastrophe of Life

This spring Tom McSorley and I corresponded about Partial Clarities, how one finds oneself writing poetry, his drum kit, and what manner of verse to use in extolling the virtues of rock stars...

When did you start writing poetry?

When I was in my mid-teens. I was always scrawling stuff down in diary form and, encouraged by my mother, I also wrote lots of letters to friends and family scattered across Canada. (I moved a lot as a kid: eight times before I turned 14.) Writing was an activity that gave me, however tenuously, a sense of control, and it was a process within which I could locate myself. I remember a visit by the renowned Canadian poet Alden Nowlan at our small town high school when I was in grade 12. He was from New Brunswick (like me) and was a successful poet; that inspired me to try writing something in poetic form.

My first genuine attempts at 'serious' poetry happened during my first year at Carleton University in Ottawa, taking my undergraduate degree in English. I had an incredibly charismatic English professor, Ben Jones, who taught 20th century poetry in such an inspirational way -- you know, like poetry mattered, that poetry was sexy. I wanted to matter and I wanted to be sexy, so I started writing poetry. These halting, earnest attempts, however, suggested that neither condition was in my future. 

What poets excited you?

So many, but primarily Leonard Cohen, Alden Nowlan, and William Carlos Williams. The more I read, the more poets I came to admire, from the Gawain poet through the centuries to our times: Al Purdy, Margaret Avison, Octavio Paz, Elisabeth Bishop, Lorna Crozier, John Ashbery, the Beats, Federico Garcia Lorca, the list is endless, really... Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Yeats, Borges, Auden...

Also absolutely critical to my love of poetry was and is the work of singer songwriters. As a teenager, I was very attentive to lyrics written by such artists as Robert Plant, David Bowie, Patti Smith, David Byrne, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, to name but a few. Again, the list is very very long. 

How does this kind of writing function in your life?

As a way to reconcile myself to my experience of the strange, modest, marvelous, mysterious catastrophe of life. I think it also serves to give a sense that I am here, that I exist, that I can, as Beckett says, make a 'stain upon the silence' that accumulates around us and threatens constantly to swallow us all.  I suppose it's ultimately just some grandiose, self-aggrandizing version of 'Kilroy Was Here' graffiti. 

Do you write poetry on a computer or with a pen on paper? Do you recite? 

Pen and paper. I recite the poetry of others, not my own. 

Inexplicit statements. How wonderful are these! How important is it for you that a line or a phrase make literal sense? 

It's not really that important. To me, it's the rhythm of the language, the cadences and sounds, that matter most in poetry. Literal sense arrives when it does, but it's not the point of departure. 

Community… there is a strong sense of it in the poems… family, co-workers, fellow citizens… I especially like disconnected strangers in public places in your poetry… Have you been encouraged by particular traditions or movements? Artistic or, even, civic? 

It's more a case of personal experience. I was a nomadic, solitary type as a kid, having to move around a lot, enter sheepishly lots of new classrooms at new schools, say hello and goodbye to a lot of people. Later, that wanderer tendency was indulged my work as a film programmer traveling to festivals, etc. I have come to like (perhaps because of its familiarity) that 'in transit' feeling, an intoxicating blend of utter anonymity and a deeply felt private identity. To a degree, being out on the road enables you to pretend, to act, to reveal or conceal yourself in ways that you can control. In general, though, I simply like to observe others to see where I might fit in, or not fit in. Maybe that's somehow a Canadian tendency: the tentative outsider always morphing into something that might fit here, not fit there...  

How would you challenge yourself now—if that was an ultimatum? What kind of expression would you like to demand of yourself? What do you want to talk about? How do you want it to flow? Tell us about your drum kit. 

I'd like to write sonnets, and a long ode to Montreal, my favorite city. I've also got an idea to write a poetic series about three separate 100 mile stretches of highway that have meant much over the course of my life: one in New Brunswick, one in Ontario, and one in Quebec. Again with the traveling! 

My five-piece Ludwig drum kit is thunderous! On it, I pound out my humble homages to the masters: John Bonham, Keith Moon (although he played Premier drums), and Neil Peart (who played all manner of percussion). 

Would you undertake a poem about Robert Plant? Please. People need to know.

I would indeed undertake a poetic panegyric about the once Golden-now-graying-God. He has been so important to my life at a number of levels, and his creative restlessness, enormous talent, and inexhaustible curiosity make him a fascinating subject for such an enterprise. Let's see, rhyming couplets or free verse....?

Purchase Partial Clarities here.

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