Gary Barwin, IMAGINING IMAGINING: Essays on Language, Identity & Infinity

 

What about mycohabitation with books? Unlike the well-ordered collection of my grandparents,that served to reinforce, preserve and establish – though part of me longs forsuch a Talmudic colloquy with the traditional structures of inquiry – I wishfor my own library to surprise and confound. To afford me the chance, as DylanThomas says, to read “indiscriminately and all the time with my eyes hangingout.” My personal library isn’t in one place. It’s pervasive. It’s scattered. Itoozes. It’s environmental. It’s in most rooms in the house. On shelves. In stacks.Beside the bed. In the bathroom. In books borrowed or ones that have wanderedoff to friends and family. I think of it as rhizomatic. Connected in invisible yetnourishing ways. From book to book. From book to me. And from book to my nowadult kids. They have some of the books, as indeed, I ended up with some of myparents’ books, as I still think about the books they had in my childhood. To paraphrasea discussion about Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of culture, the library “spreadslike the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or tricklingdownwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps …” (“The Archive of Theseus”)

I’mvery much enjoying Hamilton poet, novelist, visual and sound poet, performer, collaborator, musician and teacher Gary Barwin’s latest, the collection ofessays IMAGINING IMAGINING: Essays on Language, Identity & Infinity (Hamilton ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2024), twenty-three non-fiction piecesoriginally prompted, as he writes in the acknowledgements, by Wolsak & Wynneditor/publisher Noelle Allen, “who had the idea for a book of essays in thefirst place and whose keen editorial advice was invaluable.” As he writesfurther on, “Most of the essays here were written specifically for thecollection, but many were adapted from work written for other occasions […].” Composedwith humour and expansive thinking that punctuate the length of breadth of hisother work, these essays provide a curious and foundational centre for and howhe got to where he is now in his creative life; immersed equally, it wouldseem, in an array of genres and movements—from surrealist poems and novels tolyric narratives, visual and sound poetry, musical composition and performance,and a range of collaborations across each and every one of these forms—in anopen, engaged and questioning manner. The essays here articulate the shapes of histhinking, and how one idea might, impossibly, connect to another. “Before wecontinue,” he writes, as part of “Wide Asleep: Night thoughts on Insomnia,” “aword about digression and association. Association seems apropos to sleep (theoriginal Rorschach test) – borderless irrational night, ten-dimensional dream,time as an infinitely sided crystal made of pure possibility and quantum entanglement.Almost anything can relate to sleep. The endless monkey bars of darkness. The chocolatebar wrapper of night. Ten emus lined up, shaggy, ready to brush against yourclosed eyes.” There is such delight in the discoveries and connections thatBarwin makes in these pieces, and seeing ideas and references connect in realtime might perhaps be the finest element of these essays. Consider, forexample, the opening of the first essay, “Broken Light: The Alefbeit and What’sMissing,” that begins:

When I was a littleleft-handed kid growing up in Ireland, we used fountain pens and I always smudgedthe letters as I wrote. I was really happy when I began going to Hebrew schooland found out that Hebrew is read from right to left – the opposite of English.I could write clearly now while all the right-handed kids smudged their writingand got ink all over their hands. It was electric: this idea that languagecould be turned around. That it could make you look at things differently. Yourinky hand. The page. Your way of being in the world.

Thissingle paragraph, akin to a strand of DNA, somehow holds the entirety of GaryBarwin’s approach to his entire creative output. Or at least, might provide anynew reader of his work a kind of introduction. To consider his poetry titlesfrom the past few years alone can be overwhelming, showcasing a small degree ofthose myriad directions he moves across almost simultaneously: Barwin andLillian Nećakov’s collaborative DUCK EATS YEAST, QUACKS, EXPLODES; MAN LOSES EYE: A Poem (Toronto ON: Guernica Editions, 2023) [see my review of such here], the most charming creatures: poems (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2022)[see my review of such here], a second full-length collaboration with TomPrime, Bird Arsonist (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], a collaboration with Gregory Betts, The Fabulous Op(Ireland: Beir Bua Press, 2022) [see my review of such here] and For It Is aPLEASURE and a SURPRISE to Breathe: new & selected POEMS, edited withan Introduction by Alessandro Porco (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2019) [see my review of such here]. I won’t even begin to discuss multiple solo andcollaborative chapbooks, his musical performances (solo and collaborative),visual works, sound works, short prose or novels. How does he keep track of itall? Infinite, indeed. This is a remarkable work, and one remarkably layered, complex andpolyphonic, composed with such an ease through the language, even withinsurreal bends, quirky leaps and outright left-field asides. Somehow, theseessays introduce how the connections between seemingly-disparate works mightconnect, all part of the same expansive way of considering the world; howBarwin approaches and engages not only different perspectives, but multiple: heconnects his lefthandedness with learning Hebrew, and connects learning Hebrewwith his concurrent experiences growing up in Ireland. Through Barwin, somehow,everything connects, and there is such logic and clarity to his connections. I thinkof this paragraph, for example, included as part of the essay “That’ll Leave aMark,” which looks at collaborating in creating a public art sculpture, but onethat includes a perspective from years of working within the landscape of smalland micro literary presses in Canada:

A couple of years ago I,along with two artist friends of mine, Tor Lukasik-Foss and Simon Frank, werechosen to create a public artwork for the City of Hamilton. The work was to addressrefugees, migrants, immigrants, persecution, the search for freedom and safetyin new home. We designed and had ten bronze suitcases with a variety of symbolson them. One suitcase would lie open on its side with a live tree growing outof it. I’d never been involved in creating public art, let alone sculpture. Thelengthy and expensive process of creating bronze sculptures was fascinating. Hightemperatures. Fire. Blowtorches. Chemicals. Molten metal. Here was a work that Iwas involved in that was really heavy. Literally. And permanent. It could lastfor hundreds of years ensconced beside the path in the park. Not at all like aleaflet.