Gary Barwin's Blog: serif of nottingblog, page 20

Light, the Pope, his Toe and the Afterlife: Two Poems written along with my students in Poetry Class

The Pope, his Toe and the Afterlife

everything you say is bleeped out by birdsyou threaten some guy on the ISIS listserveand all he hears is chickensbut it’s ok, all of ISIS sounds like chickadee-dee-dee
what does the Pope say when he stubs his toe?(lets get back to that later)when two continents collide, it sounds like blackbirdsand the bomb that destroyed my village is a hummingbird
even these words are incomprehensible the entire poem, hollow-boned, hoveringI live by the light of the new philosophy and all that can be heard is squawks
and maybe it’s not what the Pope says but what his parrot says when Papa stubs his toewas is it? that’s easy, the same thing as the Pope:Soon, goddammit, this’ll all be cloud



Light
A form of darkness that isn’t visible. 
Here’s how. Imagine it’s not your eyelids, but the rest of you which opens. Where? Close. You’re always close. If there are colours beyond the visible spectrum, ultraviolet, infrared, there are other forms of dark. Colour is fast sound just as sound is slow colour. Silence creeps like sunlight on your skin, and you aged eight, lying in the garden, and your mother calls from the side door, come inside soon it’ll all be gone.

____________________

The above are two more poems that I wrote as my students wrote in creative writing class. The first one is based on David McGimpsey's "chubby sonnets" and inspired by his investigations into narrative, the self, and popular culture.

The second was inspired by Bhanu Kapil's interventions into the Urban Dictionary where she inserts her own poetic, obliquely narrative "definitions" into UrbanDictionary.com.

Morethan, after Charles North's "The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight."

One of the many pleasures of teaching a creative writing poetry class is that I get to do the writing exercises/prompts/activities alongside the students. In this assignment, I asked the students to create a poem modelled on Charles North's amazing "The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight," where he assembles an amazing list of comparisons that are entirely and delightfully meaningless.
Smarter than morons are youShorter than giants

A student in the class asked me about endings. North's poem (like his comparisons) is deliberately antipoetic and anticlimatic. We talked about different ways to end a poem. With a big finish, a fade out, a twist, a turn, a reaching back to the first line or the title. Thinking about our discussion, as I wrote my realization of my North-derived poem, I turned the ending of the poem—after a listing of mostly ridiculous comparisons—into an occasion of sudden emotion. I also chained my comparisons, which North doesn't do, each comparison linking with the one before it. This, too, came from talking to my students about the poem and different ways to create cohesion, different formal ways to weave a poem together outside of narrative or other techniques.

Two things on CBC Books: Seven Books that "Excite" Me and "Becoming a Better Poet."

Nerve Thicket Molar King


Because I'm on the jury for the CBC Poetry Prize, they've asked me some questions about some booky things. Here are the two most recent.


Seven Books that Excite CBC Poetry Juror Gary Barwin

Becoming a Better Poet

Two thing on CBC Books: Seven Books that "Excite" Me and "Becoming a Better Poet."

Nerve Thicket Molar King


Because I'm on the jury for the CBC Poetry Prize, they've asked me some questions about some booky things. Here are the two most recent.


Seven Books that Excite CBC Poetry Juror Gary Barwin

Becoming a Better Poet

LitChat: Speaking with Many Tongues

Speaking with Many Tongues
What does it mean to write in more than one language? What does it mean to include other languages in your English writing? An invitation to discuss and share work.

Leacock Shortlist!

I'm very delighted that Yiddish for Pirates is now on the Leacock Medal for Humour shortlist, along with books by Amy Jones and Drew Hayden Taylor.

Two reviews of No TV for Woodpeckers

Very happy to have two reviews of my new collection, No TV for Woodpeckers this weekend.

Barb Carey at the Toronto Star wrote this lovely assessment.


And then Phillip Crymble  the Hamilton Review of Books wrote this thoughtful discussion of the book.

And check out the entire Hamilton Review of Books.  This second issue expands on the first issue—excellent essays, interviews and review.

Two things: Yiddish for Pirates on the Leacock Medal Longlist! And No TV for Woodpeckers on 49th Shelf Must Reads

My publisher made up this award. My greatest honour.


Very delighted that Yiddish for Pirates is on the Leacock Medal longlist. The prize celebrates Canadian literary humour. What a great list of books.

*

Also grateful that the great 49th Shelf included No TV for Woodpeckers on their spring poetry must-reads along with a bunch of great books.

On Writing Exercises

The novelist and poet, Jennifer Lovegrove is this month's Writer-in-Residence at OpenBook. She is running a very interesting series about writing including one on poetry exercises.

She invited a number of poets to discuss their use of exercises and their thoughts about them in general. She kindly invited me to contribute and my interview is posted today.

Here I am!

P.S. Her new book of poetry is just out with BookThug. Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes

Interview on Queen Mobs

Me and Yiddish for Pirates, the morning after Scotiabank Giller Prize celebrations.
Writer and Brock University professor Natalee Caple arranged to have one of her students, Sarah Rockx, interview me. The interview has just appeared on Queen Mobs. I'm grateful for the excellent questions that Sarah Rockx asked me and for Natalee for setting it up. Here's the interview.