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Prairie Inclusivity

Une compilation assemblée par Kristian Enright

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Les poèmes

With the Dying of the Light

Richard Harrison

I recited to him,

Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

19

Brandi Bird

I triage the landscape. The prairies

are numb today and so am I.

I am too thin. Built

like I won't explode on hot

afternoons, a mirror

to the sky. My...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

from “Road Shoulders”

Cecily Nicholson

power lines held by birds

of prey the hostile expanse above

ditches teeming floral invasive

wayside fleurs

late summer the shoulder sang...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

mixed tape

Katherena Vermette

side a:

1. 18 and Life

her friend takes her to

the guidance counselor...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Vancouver Lights

Earle Birney

About me the night moonless wimples the mountains

wraps ocean land air and mounting...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

I Am

Titilope Sonuga

l am

gap tooth black girl

back corner of class

scribbling left-handed

poetry on blank paper

save the school's

curriculum for later

...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Walking with Walt Whitman Through Calgary's Eastside on a Winter Day

Rosemary Griebel

Blue-white afternoon. The Bow river churns and smokes

as the city rumbles, economy chokes and bundled homeless

build cardboard homes in the snow. Yes, Walt, this is the new...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Not the Music

Lorna Crozier

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

The Bow

Bertrand Bickersteth

I only know rivers

Waters elongated to the unrumpled recitatif

of endless land

The Bow knows

Has tongued and grooved the firmament, baby,

...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Editing the Prairie

Don Kerr

Well, it’s too long for one thing

and very repetitive.

Remove half the fields.

Then there are far too many fences

interrupting the narrative flow.

...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Other

Dorothy Livesay

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

Men prefer a road...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Full Metal Oji-Cree

Joshua Whitehead

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Family Reunions

Karen Connelly

The other people quit their stone fields to come here.

They slip in from nights that even the snow abandons.

They leave ashes in their glasses

and stains on...

VOIR TOUT CE POÈME

Les récitations

Pour que chaque poème de cette compilation soit accompagné d’une récitation, nous invitons les élèves du primaire et du secondaire à nous proposer leur propre vidéo de récitation pour faire entendre un poème qui n’a pas encore été récité. Envoyez-nous vos vidéos de récitation d’un des poèmes de cette compilation et il pourrait y être ajouté !

Ji Thevenard: “mixed tape”, Katherena Vermette

Divyan Karunakaran: “With the Dying of the Light” by Richard Harrison

Irene Zhang: “Full Metal Oji-Cree” by Joshua Whitehead

Ressources supplémentaires

Une introduction, selon Kristian Enright

The prairies may seem a place for moving through, but it is home, real and imagined, for many writers. The combination of flat lands and epic sky can give off a benevolent quaintness, even though we are also home to big cities. Though the prairies are geographically vast, we are deemed obscure in our writing, as though “great” writing was only done in more major centers. I admit I am Winnipeg-centered, but these poems come from all the prairie provinces as a way of being inclusive, even as poetry may occur more often in our urban centers.

My selections involve the prairie eye examining itself, its ear listening. Yet, when the prairie eye encounters a different type of space (as in Vancouver Lights, obviously not a prairie city, but by a prairie poet) the prairie poet can be appreciative of differences, like an innocent eye seeing the big coastal city as they begin to enter it. Seeing so many open fields makes one sensitive to subtle shifts, mirrored by line breaks that pull and break words along. Prairie realism, a genre found in prairie fiction, often focuses on survival in a harsh climate where difficulties are accentuated by isolation. My topic of survival in relation to self-determination is under constant subtle change as to how I imagined it.

Much could be said about the expansion of prairie and prairie writing, but I found a convenient way to describe a letting go and coming together and the spirit of our literature finding its own words: un-plain.

As we break away from margins we can avoid marginalization, just as Dennis Cooley’s poetry, for example, moves his words all over the page, as Marvin Francis and many others have done. Another function of the un is that the plains have disappeared as a direct subject. Our language is also often rich in meaning as you will see in some of the selections I have chosen, but that is not to reject plain language. Dylan Thomas’s line “time held me green and dying / though I sang in my chains like the sea,” quoted in Richard Harrison’s poem, With the Dying of the Light, seemed to me a reimagined vision of prairie rootedness and the green of nature prior to the golden fields of agriculture. It is not poetic prairie realism but has the longing we can have here, as if we were chained or unable to leave. The poet Christoff Engbrecht once stated of: “the prairies forgiven for not being the sea.” We are landlocked, and this could be a cause of a kind of disconnect that perhaps our cities have changed by bringing more people from afar to mingle. Though prairie poets may seem hidden in alleged obscurity, we continue to emerge with our ability to surprise.

I hope this small collection will convince you that prairie poetry has survived with its potential uniqueness intact through its variety, and I hope you make your own space for its growth in relation to yours. Poetry can be read in isolation, and understanding it can require determination, but your own self can grow in relation to the meanings poems contain. Then you can sing them.

Qui est Kristian ?

Kristian Enright received the John Hirsch and Eileen McTavish Sykes Awards for his first full-length book, Sonar, and has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Innovative Poetry Award, as well as the Matrix Litpop Award and is currently working on his next book, Postmodern Weather Report. His subjects of interest include: mental illness, philosophy, the environment, urban awareness, consciousness itself, and the purpose of art. He is... More

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Prairie Inclusivity

Une compilation assemblée par Kristian Enright

Les poèmes

With the Dying of the Light

19

from “Road Shoulders”

mixed tape

Vancouver Lights

I Am

Walking with Walt Whitman Through Calgary's Eastside on a Winter Day

Not the Music

The Bow

Editing the Prairie

Other

Full Metal Oji-Cree

Family Reunions

Les récitations

Ressources supplémentaires

Une introduction, selon Kristian Enright

Qui est Kristian ?