A few days after the fact, I can say I’m home again now. I went from Sage Hill Experience directly to Purdyfest without wanting to touch the ground and all the nattering errands and practicalities that involved.
I wanted a lot from each…to change myself, as I usually do, except this time thru a route of new routines, new input, new questions, new people. Time will tell how much the global goals were achieved but what is clear is that I enjoyed myself.
Amazing sets of people. Purdyfest was 3 days of mostly camping but also reading in the round and a roundtable talking about the influence of Ted Plantos who I knew nothing about. He seems to have given a timely shoulder tap to encourage a lot of people to continue. Hanging out was sweet, except for that blasted mourning dove who tested my love of nature at all hours. The hardness of ground made bed that much softer we we got back.
The people at Sage Hill were phenomenal and the environment nourishing for mind, spirit and body. I talked at more length over at Humanyms on that.
It was something like Katamavik meeting writers coast to coast, but of all ages and equals in this experience of being able to relate to the experience of doing this odd obsession without needing to justify or get blank looks and need to define terms. People were curious and convivial. I was struck by how, East to West, Fred Wah kept coming up as an influence from various people. I had associated him with West coast sub-set but regardless of style, people referenced him.
Being in that time machine going nowhere but being present in that sealed context allowed new access in various ways. I haven’t arranged my life to get much exposure to short stories, novels and non-fiction — for those streams to be mixed with poetry readings showed me the unity in writing skill. The genres are not so worlds apart. I heard people and stories I wouldn’t have otherwise.
There were dozens of new and long-standing voices who weren’t on my radar at all, whether in person (John Lent and Ted Barris, and too many to list), or in book form (Gary Geddes, John B. Lee and Tim Lilburn). More Daphne Marlatt, Pat Lowther, Erin Moure and nathalie stephens to spend time with in person or page with the time to focus.
In the case of Susan Stenson I had heard her before on the page, but to hear in person puts a new depth and I now have a new book to watch out for: Her next book, Nobody Move, is coming from Sono Nis Press this fall.
For Sage Hill, part of my practical goal was: I wanted to pare down the unwieldy manuscript that ballooned from a few poems, shooting past chapbook length to somewhere near 190 pages. By the time I left home to go west, it got cut back to 130 pages but still too much and I was unclear on how it held together or didn’t. I have more of a sense of a couple routes to cluster poems, see where gaps are, blind spots in what I say or omit or oversay. Having people who don’t know me come and up and say, this part was good kiddo gives a sort of double-blind test of assurance.
Then there was the value of seeing other people in the midst of their projects and seeing how they think about its development was interesting. I liked getting into the meat of one idea, like space in a poem and just brainstorm around that as a group for 3 hours. That feeds the brain.
It was interesting to meet people I’ve only known on the paper or digital page, or known the literary effects, but not the name. And I was glad that meeting a literary hero worked as I was more impressed upon leaving. (You never know how such things might go in-person. Sometimes you love the work but then the person is a misclick. Or changes how the work reads for the worse. Not in this case.)
*
I was largely away from the internet for 2 weeks and any composition was in my head then to longhand, with re-writes literally being writing it over again. (My usual often starting with jots digitally or in hand enough to jog my memory to do rounds of editing in typing.)
I inhaled as much books of poetry as I could absorb. I aimed to keep myself open by Susan Jeffers motto: don’t say no, can’t, will try, would like to, and shouldn’t. say yes to life.
Part of the Sage Hill included tips on giving a good reading, exposure to great readings and things to read. It was structured with focused time and downtime that allowed the brain to percolate.
I have more of a sense of project, top-down point of view of what does what. A poem can work by itself. I wish I could remember who rob mclennan interviewed who won a CBC Literary Award with some poems but cut them from the manuscript because, although, strong, they did not gel there.
One-off poems or short series I can do but project level is a different management skill. I’ve been watching the model of how to hang a manuscript together, for poems to be a book rather than a heap bound together ever since Stephen Brockwell was talking about the distinction 4 years ago.
My eye has been on the lookout for how people understand this notion of collection versus, best-of gathered together. When is it a gallery show of art, versus a gallery with incidentally in the same place art. At 40-words I’ve played with the same notions of gallery hanging of poems, how one affect the one beside it, changes flavours by juxtaposition and keeps the palate fresh, or with too much change back to back, bounces energy frenetic.
What is the ratio for mixing it up? In readings I’ve been watching how people make a mood-arc or narrative arc with poems. Start strong but neutral, end on a light night like a dessert seems to work well. In linked poems in haiku-world, the same principle applies. At Purdyfest last year, we did renga and it was explained the opening is a handshake with nothing too risky, eventually you can get serious, then risque then you bring it back down to a calm handshake again.
*
So lot’s still to process. I have notes to go thru and questions to ask myself.
I actually applied for a federal grant for travel. This is the first time I’ve entered the grant system for anything. Even when eligible for EI, each time, I never applied. We’ll see eventually if there’s a pay-back in a financial sense. It’d be nice, but when I was teaching I just took unpaid leave, paid for national conferences out of pocket and absorbed the financial loss rather than enter the lottery of being knighted with approval. One does what one must. Working p/t or f/t for the cash economy, I was doing poetry the same. I’m not going anywhere. Been doing this poetry thing for what, 25 years (with my internal requisite earnestness). Provided I’m still alive, I expect to be still at in 50 more years, regardless of the money factor.
Gains are knowledge but more than understanding, gains are walking alongside people you appreciate, who wow you with their lives and words. And I met a lot of those people.

Once, years ago, I heard someone say that it is an act of respect for your own material to have it memorized. I can’t remember who stated it but I recall the challenge was put forward that if you, as the writer, won’t take that time with it, why should the audience?
At the Guerrilla Poetry Series the guy at minute 5, off camera, later explained how there’s a tradition back to ancient Greeks of composing poems with anchors so that at regular intervals, there are cues to remind you of the next part. Like the device of rhyme to hook you forward through the poem, mnemonic devices can assist but inaudibly. Only you may only know the associations but they can assist if you get stage fright.
At Raise it, there’s an interview with Sean O’Gorman, aka OG that talks about reciting and performing your poetry.

TN: What is the best advice you’ve received?
OG: The best advice I’ve received has come from Rusty Priske and the members of The Recipe who ingrained it into my head that the best delivery comes from memorized poems, and from Brad Morden and Nathaniel Larochette that helped me find better/faster ways to memorize a large amount of material in a short amount of time.
Nathaniel pointed out that I wrote out my poems in half sentences that took up only half of the paper and I broke the lines up to follow the rhyming scheme, but if i wrote them out in paragraph form it would allow me to find the poems natural flow and help in my delivery.
Brad Morden showed me that by memorizing a poem starting at the last stanza and working my way back it would keep the build up throughout the poem sharper because the ending is the part that I would know the most and at the peak moment of the poem I would have a stronger delivery.

At Purdyfest people ran about half and half of people who read off the page, with or without stumbles and those who dropped a poem from memory. Jim Larwill off the top of his head took requests and could perform from repertoire off the top of his head. Jeff Seffinga even when talking at the round table structured his thoughts with oratorial dramatic pauses that hooked the audience. Poems he belted out. Other poems he writes are quiet pieces. Some fit stage, some better fit page.
At Sage Hill people who performed mostly referred to notes except Gerry Hill who performed his poems. He also was able to create an ownership of words by speaking from diaphragm to audience ears, with the sort of composure that many poetry readings rarely see. Others could also hold the audience rapt with performing with the written script.
The act of working it until it is memorized is an act of editing as well, reworking so it all swings freely from the tongue. It’s not something I’ve done but appreciate when I hear. Do it myself? We’ll see.

Robyn Sarah is Writer in residence at U of O for fall 2010.
watch me edit: introducing yourself is the latest post into Gillian’s editing process.
Interview with Nomados. Good to get more background. They have 30 titles out already. Huh.
Tiny books of 8 small pages from one sheet, and Favorite 500 words tiny books. [via the Serif]
“if you make one ironic gesture in a poem, people write the rest of the poem and book off as mere irony. Which is ridiculous, of course. And there are poets whose only tonal register is irony, and nothing is more boring, because nothing is risked.” ~ Matthew Rohrer
derek beaulieu now has a site as well as speechless
Been inspired by Ontario Petroglyphs? There’s a writing contest call for that…

I was glad to sell 5 chapbooks and give away 4 and go tradsies on one more.
Gerry, Brenda and Heather had some things to say about their feelings on the Sage Hill Experience. (Mine coming, maybe tomorrow.)
Publishing has been flipped on its head, said the Hidden Brook Press presentation on the future of publishing — the model is inverted. it used to be a publisher had a ready loyal audience and that is what a publisher brought to the equation but not it is the writer who builds the audience and sells that leverage of ears to the publisher as an asset.

Sweet Cuba: the building of a poetic tradition: 1608-1958 = forja de una tradición poética: 1608-1958 by Manuel de Jesús Velázquez and John B Lee (Hidden Brook Press, 2010) I only saw the shrink wrapped copy but seems like an intriguing project.
Literary Database of Quebec English-Language Authors

John Goodman has written an essay for AngelHouse Press on Obscurity in Poetry but it takes a fast-forward run thru the last millennium of writing. The 11 pages make for informative reading…
Here are some teaser snippets:

After the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror in 1066 and the
subsequent reigns of the Plantagenet Kings, French culture – and poetry – dominated English culture. The French introduced classical meters and end-rhymes into England. Old English poetry did not use end rhymes, but relied on fore-rhymes, since Old English was rich in words beginning with similar sounding syllables, arranged alliterative in four-beat lines.
[…]
Old English verse encouraged metaphorical or euphemistic language. For example, if ‘the sea’ didn’t alliterate with the other words in the line, a euphemism would be found, such as ‘the whale’s road,’ a technique called kenning. Similarly, a ship might be referred to as an ‘oar steed’ or a battle as a ‘storm of spears.’ While adopting French forms, the English bards retained this colourful and figurative language […]
Rather than dismissing non-narrative poetry because it is difficult to understand, a productive approach is to try and discern the writer’s underlying poetic and ask why a poet would want to write something abstruse in the first place. Language is what we use to communicate, so why would anyone intentionally write something incomprehensible?
The answer has a lot to do with the way our minds work. Our minds are constantly attempting to knit the world together and the tool the mind uses to structure reality is association. Our minds are associative engines continually binding our fragmented experiences together into a unified whole. Where there is no association between discrete events, the mind will supply one. […]
Dada […] sought to disrupt conditioned responses through the introduction of the random and unexpected. Surrealism followed soon after with the incorporation of images from the only place where we are free from our conditioning: the natural symbolic language of dreams. If our lives – and even our creativity – are directed by uncontrollable subconscious forces, why not give up the illusion of conscious control entirely and go straight to the source, the subconscious mind?
[…]
Each poetic is a self-contained schema. A poem created within that structure is meaningful within that frame – and it doesn’t have to be meaningful in other frames. The constraints of Romantic poetry don’t apply to Beat poetry. […]
There is no one poetic that characterizes all avant-garde poetry. Not all our innovative poets can be said to be attempting to write beyond their conditioning, or exploring the limits of language, or trying to reconstruct language to say things that cannot be said with conventional forms. Some experimental poets stay close to the surrealist tradition and relate bizarre tales in largely narrative, syntactical format. For others, the disruption and disorientation of the language is the message, expressing a sense of alienation by making us feel like strangers in our own culture – a dysfunctional world represented in dysfunctional language. Some intentionally blur the demarcations between the various elements of experience, overlapping inner and outer worlds. Some break their experiences down into basic components and reorder them in new ways. Others use random elements, text symbols rather than words, or invented languages to test the ability of language to convey meaning. Some use surprising juxtapositions of images in an attempt to bypass the critical mind and speak directly to the subconscious. And others provoke alternative perspectives on our shared reality through oblique, lateral, non-linear links rather than direct statement.

Do you set your poems to videos? Heather Haley has extended the call for submissions:

Due to popular demand and a fair bit of pleading, I’ve moved the deadline up. Please help spread the word/call for entries and send in your videopoem by Sept. 1, 2010.
See The Voice: VISIBLE VERSE 10th Anniversary Celebration & Festival
Call for Entries and Official Guidelines:
* Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
* Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or-subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
* Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
* Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
* Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
For more information, contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com and, or check out our
FB group