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Play refuses easy solutions

Armstrong’s War

By Colleen Murphy

Directed by Mindy Parfitt

 Revue Stage,  Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver

 (World Premiere, Oct. 17 – Nov. 9/13)

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

When 12-year-old Halley Armstrong comes to the hospital room to read to a convalescing Afghanistan veteran, he tries to send her away. But she won’t take no for an answer. Thus begins an unlikely relationship that eventually enables each of them to reveal hidden secrets.

Halley, brilliantly played by 14-year-old Matreya Scarrwener in her theatrical debut, is determined to earn a community service badge as a Pathfinder. She has picked Michael off the “readers wanted” list because they have the same last name. But Michael, played by Mik Byskov, a recent UVic graduate, just wants to be left to his imaginings about his friend Robbie, with whom he shared a traumatizing war experience.

As it turns out, Halley and Michael have much more in common than just their last names. In different ways, the usual routes to conventional lives have been disrupted for each and they have both become “pathfinders” groping toward an ill-defined future. Halley is in a wheelchair and, when the play opens, Michael is under his hospital bed re-living his war trauma. As they read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage together, they gradually confront the face-saving narratives they have each invented as a means of survival and admit to each other the truth of what really happened.

Both actors responded to deft direction by Mandy Parfitt, Scarrwener catching perfectly the delicate balance of a 12-year-old between childish fantasy and brave confrontation of real life, and Byskov sending shivers down the spine when he voiced the pleading of a wounded buddy: “Killl meee.”

The play isn’t perfect. Too much time devoted to reading aloud interrupted the dramatic action, and the decision to have Halley read the dialogue of union soldiers with a Southern accent and to depict Michael as a poor reader added to the tedium because the words and meaning were difficult to understand.

The most unsatisfying aspect of this play, however, may be the fault of unrealistic audience expectations. We want transformation, to see the characters rising whole and perfect out of the fires of devastation. But life isn’t like that, and playwright Colleen Murphy won’t let us kid ourselves that it is.

At one point, in a rage, Michael tears a book to pieces. When he gives it back to Halley, it is a patchwork of taped pages. Halley is shocked, but later reports that her teacher has accepted her cover story and assured her that there is a “replacement fund for books,” That may be true for library books, but not for the books of our lives. When our lives are destroyed, Murphy seems to suggest, all we can do is patch them up and move ahead as best we can.

Neither of these characters is transformed; they both cling to whatever they can of the conventional rules of life. By the end of the play, Michael is back in uniform, ready and willing to return to war despite the horrors he has experienced.  Halley is no doubt making plans for acquiring her next community service badge.

“That’s your trouble,” Michael says to Halley toward the end of the play. “You hope too much.” So do we all, and sometimes it leads to disappointment. But Halley has the final rejoinder. She reminds Michael of the family motto she tries to live by: “I remain unvanquished.” May it be so for us all.

Joy Fisher is a Victoria writer.

YA novel limns graffiti complexities

Burning from the Inside

By Christine Walde

Cormorant/Dancing Cat Books

240 pages, $14.95

Reviewed by Kirsten Larmon

Christine Walde’s second book for young adults, Burning from the Inside, is a richly complex, often lyrical novel that portrays the rarely addressed graffiti artist community.

The perspective shifts between Thom, an eighteen-year-old graffiti artist who has been on the street for three years, and Aura, an artist with strong beliefs about art, politics and the rest of her world.  I found these shifts, Aura’s terse narration, and a lack of dialogue indicators,  at first more jarring than engaging. However, as I persisted, I found myself hooked into Thom and Aura’s world and their mysterious quest.

Thom has just been caught graffiti-writing for the third time, a serious offence. However, rather than be handed over to his parents, Thom cuts a deal with the police. He agrees to help find a notorious graffiti crew who call themselves the G7 and who have been defacing billboards all over the city. By day, Thom will be serving his community time “buffing” graffiti off walls; by night, he will be free to graffiti those same walls, posing as an artist named TNT and searching out the G7. However, when he meets the group and Aura, a dedicated member, Thom begins to question everything he has been told. Together Thom and Aura begin a search for the truth behind the G7’s leader and a missing young female graffiti artist, Story.

Burning is a book about growing up and finding one’s way, populated by teens trying to sort out who they are, what their world is, and how they intend to inhabit it. Unlike many authors who write for teen audiences, Walde allows her characters some bad behaviour without punishing them for it: pot, alcohol and ecstasy are all consumed (in moderation) without wrecking lives. Her teens are strident in their beliefs and full of certainty about the alienation and corruption of the corporate adult world. Though it is set in the present, real world, there is a touch of mysticism to the novel – a hint of fate and prophesy that runs through dreams, visions, and substance trips.

Thom and Aura are compelling characters, and the mystery which overtakes them is well-paced and suspenseful. A poet, Walde’s prose is precise and often beautiful, if sometimes elevated beyond language typical of the YA landscape: obscure words like “elegiacally” pop up from time to time. However, the novel is not without weaknesses: there are plot points that fray on close inspection, characters whose actions feel overly piloted by the author and movie cliches that skim over difficult plausibility issues. In particular, one character’s motivations are barely comprehensible and culminate in a final scene that feels like a derailment of his portrayal throughout most of the novel.

Burning from the Inside is not a simple read. It is a complex book for the inquisitive, the dreamers and the literary – a perhaps small, but certainly important, segment of the young-adult reading market.

Kirsten Larmon is a Victoria resident

 

 

 

 

First Nations voices powerful

We are Born with Songs Inside Us:

Lives and Stories of First Nations People in British Columbia

By Katherine Palmer Gordon

Harbour Publishing, 2013

246 pages,  $24.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

As its publisher suggests, Katherine Palmer Gordon’s sixth book, We Are Born with the Songs Inside Us, is particularly timely. Regrettably, Canadians have grown accustomed to finding First Nations issues in the headlines. The long litany of grievances—poverty, inadequate housing, addiction, disproportionate suicide and imprisonment rates, abuse of women, not to mention the toxic legacy of the residential schools—has created a sad and negative climate for Aboriginal people. This is where Gordon’s book is most timely, for it challenges those negative stereotypes and offers a truly optimistic view of First Nations people.

Gordon interviewed hundreds of individuals, but presents profiles of sixteen in her book. Their backgrounds and occupations are as varied as you would expect in any group: they are teachers and artists, entrepreneurs and politicians, doctors and actors, athletes and councillors, lawyers and chiefs. Some have seen their way clearly from the beginning; others have struggled to overcome disadvantages. What they have in common is success and a powerful belief in the value of their cultural heritage.

In her Introduction, Gordon  describes the role of father birds in teaching their offspring the full range of their characteristic songs. “A baby bird that does not have the opportunity to hear its father sing will never learn its proper song. It will remain bereft of its complete identity, and the single most important characteristic governing its ability to take care of itself, be independent, communicate and relate—not only to members of its own species, but to all other creatures.”

The analogy with First Nations people is persuasive. The residential schools set out deliberately to erase that identity. Many of the individuals profiled in this book are the children of the generation so damaged by that policy. They see clearly that they need to go back to first principles; as Trudy Lynn Warner says, “I know we have been and continue to be guided on our path by our ancestors,” and Clarence Louie states firmly,”My basic mantra is: make sure you keep your cultural identity.” Some strive passionately to preserve their languages, seeing in them the key to that identity; “After all,” says Mike Willie, “if you don’t know who you are, you’re just roaming this world, lost.”

The individuals whose voices are heard in this book are quick to point out that there is no stagnation involved in returning to ancestral ways. They see that the strength acquired by knowing exactly who they are enables them to move forward, whether that involves creating a business, perfecting new art forms or negotiating a treaty. Clarence Louie added to his basic mantra: “…if you want to prosper, get an education, work hard and throw everything you can at economic development.” None of these individuals stands still; all of them share Beverley O’Neil’s strategy for marathon running, aiming not at the finishing line, but past it.

Gordon’s subjects know they have a long way to go, but their conviction and enthusiasm is impossible to downplay. The voices of these young, articulate First Nations people convey boundless optimism for the future. How astute Gordon was to get out of the way and let them speak for themselves.

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cukoo’s Child, will be published in Spring 2014

Gateway expose shows inaction no option

The Oil Man and the Sea:

Navigating the Northern Gateway

By Arno Kopecky

Douglas & McIntyre

264 pages, $26.95

Reviewed by Aaron Shepard

Part rousing adventure and travelogue, part exposé, The Oil Man and the Sea follows journalist and travel writer Arno Kopecky and photographer Ilja Herb as they sail from Victoria up B.C.’s central coast. They travel not just as reporters but as activists, hoping to raise awareness about the environmental risks the Northern Gateway pipeline poses to one of the world’s last great wildernesses.

As with most books of this sort, we begin not with big themes, but the adventurer-writer beset by anchor mishaps, engine failure and an overwhelming array of nautical charts and equipment. At times in the first few chapters, their quest seems not just quixotic, but forgotten altogether. But the fumbling of these novice sailors is an intimate, effective way of immersing readers in an unfamiliar landscape. And their early misadventures dovetail nicely with one of the book’s main themes: the vibrant, hazardous complexity of the coastline and its people.

Kopecky introduces us, directly or indirectly, to the multitude of big names at the centre of the Northern Gateway drama, including Enbridge, the federal and provincial governments, the Joint Review Panel, the Heiltsuk, Gitga’at, Haisla Nations, the Pacific Pilotage Authority (the pilot boats that would lead oil tankers through the treacherous coastline), and Bill C-38, the federal omnibus bill that inexplicably closed B.C.’s oil spill response centre. We also meet a host of memorable characters: fishermen, engineers, environmentalists, First Nations elders and band councilors who offer their different opinions about pipelines, refineries and oil tankers.

But it is the coastline itself – a “labyrinth” of channels, straits, bays and islands – that remains the biggest player on stage, a place both robust and fragile with its turbulent seas, salmon runs and rich wildlife. Perhaps the most vivid evocation of place is near the book’s end, when Kopecky explores Douglas Channel and the humpback whales that may have to share their once-quiet waters with tankers bearing bitumen and liquefied natural gas.

Between conversations with the locals, fishing and grizzly bear watching – the book contains some gorgeous photos – Kopecky pulls the lens back to show the equally intricate web of national politics, science and economics. An adventure that begins with two young men goofing around on a sailboat becomes a story about Big Oil, and the future of a province, its people and its wilderness.

The Oil Man and the Sea is refreshingly current and vital, with a postscript that includes the deadly explosion in Lac-Megantic this past July. Disasters like Lac-Megantic and the Kalamazoo River bitumen spill in 2010 illustrate our complicity: our consumption drives the need to pull as much oil from the ground as humanly possible, whatever the risk. Kopecky’s quest for a tanker-free coast may indeed prove quixotic, but his message is that we should take responsibility, at the very least, for ensuring governments and industry enforce and follow strict environmental and safety regulations. No matter how confusing or paradoxical the issue of pipelines and the economy, our inaction is not an option.

Aaron Shepard is a Victoria writer. His debut novel, When is a Man, will be published in April 2014. 

 

Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon

Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon               

Seattle Art Museum, until January 5, 2014

Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Audio tours free–download app from website (http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/), download podcast from website, audio guide wands available at SAM (also has extended visual descriptions)

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

The Seattle Art Museum is the only United States museum to have this exhibit, and with over 300 works, Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon is a delight for anyone interested in the history and art of Peru. The exhibit covers more than 3000 years of human activity and includes treasures of Macchu Picchu, royal tombs and modern folk art.

The lavish use of gold and silver for ornaments and utensils reveals the wealth of the Inca and other ancient civilzations, along with their attention to detailed beauty.  Animals feature widely as does the human body. A  gold forehead ornament from the Mochica culture, about 100-800 CE, has a cat’s head and octopus tentacles. The cat’s fangs are great. Sculptures of human genitals presumably celebrate fecundity and the wonder of conception and birth. The art works are both earthy and other worldly, a splendid combination of the known and the mysterious.

One of the most intriguing pieces is a quipo, an arrangement of knotted cords in order to keep records. It dates form 1450-1532, and is elegantly arranged in a fan display, although it was likely meant to be purely functional. It has 226 strings, and no one but the maker can decipher its meaning. Some communities still possess quipo, but their system of counting is lost. For a civilization with no written records, quipo were a valuable innovation.

Artists of the past were skilled in metals, ceramics and fabrics. Once the Spanish arrived, the art became Catholic and often seems gloomy to me. Attempts were made to blend cultures, but the dividing line is death. The ancient cultures had a different attitude, and that is seen in their art and artifacts. The pre-columbian works are the most interesting , I thought, along with photographs of people.  Hans Brüning’s late 19th century photos and Eduardo Calderón’s 21st century photos are arresting.

One disturbing display is a video of Chancay tomb raiders who call themselves “Pirates of the Huacas.” Once these raiders loot a tomb, any archeological knowledge is lost forever, but, because there’s money to be made, they don’t care.  There’s something mystical about their activities as drugs are involved, but the destruction is permanent. The black market in art works thrives  presumably because of poverty and the collectors’ greed. This display is an effort at educating people about the danger of raiding and stealing art.

The Seattle Art Museum once again delivers an informative and beautiful exhibit.

Candace Fertile is a Victoria reviewer.

Bullfighter flashes cape at gender

Matadora

By Elizabeth Ruth

Comorant

327 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Chris Fox

            Matadora is Elizabeth Ruth’s third novel. It follows Smoke, her second novel, which tells an entransing tale of a small Ontario tobacco town in the late fifties, and Ten Good Seconds of Silence, her first, which now that I’ve read Matadora and Smoke, I will soon seek out. Both previous novels were finalists for a number of literary prizes.

            Matadora shifts to 1930s Spain, but Ruth’s interest in history remains. As Smoke took literary and healing energy from the exploits of The Purple Gang, notorious in prohibition era Detroit, Matadora gains gravitas by invoking the Spanish Civil War. Similarly, Ruth remains interested in the gender queer. In Smoke, a transman steals the show, but in Matadora, the ambiguous, ambitious Luna is the show. She is a wonderfully realized character that we first meet, appropriately (The Sun Also Rises) at sunrise, with the silhouette of a Sangre Caste bull behind her. She is leaping from a wall, spurred by the absence (since birth) of her mother, and sure, at that moment, that she can fly.

We are also introduced to Manuel, who acts as Luna’s double and foil throughout the novel, a character device that serves Ruth well. He is the first-born son of the ranchero owner and meant to be a bull-fighter, but he aspires to be a poet – an ambition as unlikely as Luna’s desire to become a matadora. Both seek flight from their given lives and offer each other what help they can. Their bond, like Luna’s wilful talent, is blood-borne, provoking reconsideration of nature/nurture debates.

Ruth has done terrific research, especially into the details of the making of a matadora. She even introduces “anti-taurinos,” early animal rights activists. (Interestingly, the Spanish word implies that they are anti-bull, not anti-bull-fighting, which is indicative of how aficionados (mis)understand the raising, training, and killing of bulls for loving and respecting the animals. Somewhere here lies my only reservation in recommending Matadora. Despite the many clever metaphoric uses of bull-fighting in the novel, the more primary focus is on actual bull-fighting, which I think some readers may find difficult. I myself wondered how I would write about it; however, I did find the novel’s attempt to convey the aficionados’ and matadors’ perspective worthwhile. Daring the bull has a long and mythic cultural history, and Matadora draws on that heritage. When Luna explains the mystery of it, as she often does, I almost understood.

Moreover, in a clever last pass, Ruth has Canada provide Grace, a young Canadian who has come to help fight Franco. Unlike Luna, who spills blood in the ring, Grace transports blood to the front. Of course she is an anti-taurino. Matadora stages a confrontation between what is bright (Luna and her suit of lights) in the darkness that is bull-fighting and the gaze of the New World struggling to understand the Old. Grace is drawn to Luna, but remains judgemental and although the novel offers Luna Grace, Luna chooses to be only matadora. It is enough for her and probably enough for most readers. Ruth has given us a very well-crafted novel.

Chris Fox is a Victoria writer, editor, and instructor.

 

Boyden hauntingly explores body

The Orenda

By Joseph Boyden

Hamish Hamilton

496 pages, $32

By Diana Davidson

Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda is a novel about: the birth of Canada as a nation, the complex hierarchies and trade arrangements that defined Huron and Iroquois Nations at the time of first European contact, the devastating hubris of colonial enterprise.  It’s also a story about people’s capacity for resilience, revenge, and grace in moments of extraordinary loss.

For me, The Orenda is a book about the body.  I am haunted by Boyden’s exploration of the corporeal in his third novel.  Maybe this is a sign of the skilled job Boyden does at creating flesh-and-blood characters on the page.  Maybe this shows how well Boyden recreates the harshness of survival in seventeeth-century ‘Canada.’  As with other great contemporary novels about colonial histories (Beloved, Book of Negroes, Kiss of the Fur Queen), bodies in The Orenda are always both personal and political. 

The most intimate and central relationship of the novel – between a Huron leader and the young Iroquois girl who becomes his daughter – begins when Bird kidnaps Snow Falls after killing her family in a retaliation raid and drags her back to his Wendat village along with the Jesuit Priest Christophe.  Snow Falls tries to resist her captivity with the only means at her disposal – her own body – by starving herself, pissing in Bird’s bed, sleeping.  Later in the story her pregnant body holds the tenuous potential for the community’s renewal after epidemics and conflict bring devastation.

            The Orenda has many brutal scenes.  I disagree, however, with Hayden King’s criticism that “the inevitable conclusion is that Indians were really just very violent” (in Muskrat Magazine).  Boyden is careful to show us, through the French Priest Christophe’s reaction to the torture the Huron inflict upon the Iroquois, that these rituals do not indicate “savageness” but rather civilization.  The French Priest sees the complicated performance of torture as proof that the people he futilely tries to convert are more similar to the people of his homeland (who burn witches and heretics at the stake) and to the great inquisitors of Spain than he had realized.  Brutality becomes a universal human trait.

What is perhaps most compelling about bodies in The Orenda is that this is also a very spiritual text.  The title itself is the Huron word signifying that all things have an essence (which translates most closely into “spirit”).  The corporeal and spiritual are intertwined for Bird, Snow Falls, and their community in a way that Christophe (and later his flock of Jesuits) try to deny and separate. We see this connection in the medicine woman Gosling’s ability to heal by knowing the natural world (herbs) and the spiritual (rituals that draw out illness).  We see this disconnect in Christophe’s resignation to starvation and torture, his focus on the afterlife, and even his celibacy that the Wendat women find ludicrous.

This tension between the physical and spiritual ultimately ensures that Boyden’s characters are complex people who we can love, hate, mourn, and, perhaps forgive.  In light of the irreconcilably violent history of our country, this potential of forgiveness as a very human quality rather than a supernatural one is, in my opinion, The Orenda’s greatest achievement of many.

Diana Davidson’s debut novel Pilgrimage is about women and men on the Lac St. Anne Settlement at the turn of the twentieth century.  On November 19 at 7 p.m., she will be in Victoria, speaking with local writer Pauline Holdstock, at Russell Books.

 

Biography turns lens on famed photojournalist

Photo credit: Kevin Doyle

Review by Liz Snell

“They say real men don’t cry – that’s crap.” Photographer Ted Grant, 84, wasn’t afraid to get emotional in front of a packed auditorium during the launch of his life’s biography.

Grant’s biographer, UVic graduate Thelma Fayle, met Grant as his student at Camosun College. Years later, she hesitantly emailed him to ask his help in photographing someone for an article. Since then Fayle has conducted over 50 interviews with Grant. She saw the necessity in honouring his legacy: “Everyone knew his work but nobody knew his name,” she said. “My goal in writing this book was to honour a hardworking Canadian artist.”

Recognized by many as “the father of Canadian photojournalism,” Grant’s contribution to Canadian culture was a particular emphasis during the launch. Whether through his story about his famous photograph of Pierre Trudeau sliding down a l banister in the Chateau Laurier, or his experience organizing photographers at Victoria’s 1994 Commonwealth Games, Grant’s connection to national history was evident. Grant had intimate access to famous lives and was even on a first-name basis with prime ministers.

Yet Grant’s presence conveys humility. He called much of modern concern with technique “garbage” and downplayed his own skill by emphasizing timing: “I’m a photographer, not a technician.” He advised photographers to “shoot someone when they’re listening” to capture the intense focus in their eyes, and to be “first to arrive and last to leave” to capture candid moments. His work exhibits a striking ability to portray someone’s unguarded essence.

His vibrant, wry sense of humour had the crowd laughing through most of the presentation, but he was also moved to tears multiple times during his talk, particularly when discussing a photo of his wife, who passed away last year. He noted, “I’ve shot over 100 babies being born, and I’ve cried at every one.”

His passion for photography was evident when, during a question period, a young photography student asked him for advice. At first he joked, “Go over to the medical building and become a doctor.” Then he said, “If it’s totally consuming and you love it, it doesn’t matter what you do, what hours you put in.”

He described photography as a “magical career” in which he’s been “constantly alive.”

Many recounted Grant’s popularity as a photography instructor. One of Grant’s former students told how Grant had staged his own in-classroom arrest, to test whether students would respond by pulling out their cameras, as a photographer should.

For Grant’s 76th birthday he photographed himself flying upside down in a fighter plane. He discussed plans for his 100th birthday, and joked that he’ll have the undertakers present so that when the news person announces his birthday, he can “drop dead” and the party will start.

While his photographs may be more recognized than his name, Grant emphasized the photographer’s duty take a backstage role. “If you’re unseen but you’re in the same room, that’s when you get to be appreciated.”

Fayle’s biography (published by Heritage Group in Victoria) finally turns the lens on Ted Grant to capture his own light.

Liz Snell is a freelance writer in Victoria

Poetry book fine travelling partner

The Book of Places

 By Yvonne Blomer

Black Moss Press

2012, 95 pages.

Reviewed by Arleen Pare

            Book of Places is a neat little square of a book that would fit into most back pockets, most backpacks, most travel bags going most places in the world.  It’s a fit travel companion too, covering not only geographic space, but also psychic space. Adulthood, for instance.  The Past.  And Japan, Thailand, Wales, England, Rhodesia, Canada, Nevada.  Exile.  Sorrow.

But first, full disclosure: the author of The Book of Places, Yvonne Blomer, is a friend of mine. And while it is generally agreed that friends should not review the books of friends, in the case of Blomer, this becomes difficult.  Blomer knows almost all the poets and writers in Victoria, maybe in BC, and many are her friends. She has served as representative for The Federation of BC Writers, continues to host of one of Canada’s most successful reading series, Planet Earth Poetry; and she teaches writing at Camosun College. She knows writers.  Who possibly could review this book without sharing some writerly connection?

The Book of Places is Blomer’s second book of poetry. Her first, a broken mirror, fallen leaf was short-listed for The Gerald Lampert Award in 2007.  Her third, As if a Raven, has just been released.  She has published two chapbooks, has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and co-edited, along with Cynthia Woodman Kerkham, the recent Poems From Planet Earth, itself a stunning anthology.

Places is divided into three parts, with each section occupying a slightly different landscape.  In the first section, for instance, Blomer offers the reader a range of physical places: a field with a woman in it; a desert with a man in it; a road with a boy on it.  All beautifully rendered: in the desert, the “light is pixilated / feather-patterned through dust.”   From “Woman in a Field:” The sun so bright, almost / bright enough to hold her there.”

And “Packing to Leave,” a travel poem, begins with the advice: “Take nothing. All this is someone else’s,” and ends with: “Take your toothbrush / Whisper into the hollows of the house / leave your name.”  Poetic advice, and haunting, the advice of a poet who knows her craft and who has left home.  Blomer is also an avid, no, make that a passionate cyclist. When she writes “Cycling home, Norwich,” she creates a cadence, a tone so true, so convincing, the reader is on the bicycle with her:

the way I let it soar and fall

around each aching corner. How

I barely look up at church, Medieval

stone buildings, the city hall

and falling down, dropping now toward taxi stand, market

I roll: body still, arched, ready

to spring loosely over bumps and bricks I know

are coming.

I must recommend this slim, squared volume, the perfect travel size.  The perfect trip.  And though Blomer has travelled much and far, about places, she admits, “I never knew/ how to leave/ and stay, all the same,” touching on one of the basic conundrums of life, whether in this place or that.

Arleen Pare is a Victoria poet and novelist.

Poet argues against simple readings

Poetry and Meaninglessness

At Gibson Auditorium, Camosun College, Lansdowne Campus

The Carol Shields Lecture

Delivered by Jan Zwicky

October 19th, 2013

Reviewed by Senica Maltese

As a writing student focusing on fiction and poetry, I had high expectations going into Jan Zwicky’s Carol Shields Lecture entitled “Poetry and Meaninglessness.” The lecture did not disappoint; however, it was not at all what I expected it to be.

The Victoria Writers Festival brochure stated that the lecture would explore how some contemporary poetry strikes us as meaningless and to what degree this assessment is correct. For this reason, I went into the lecture expecting to look at specific contemporary poems and to explore how they could be regarded as meaningless and how, perhaps, they nevertheless retained meaning. As I should have anticipated, this discussion resisted the simplicity that I predicted.

I firmly believe that we readers should engage with material that is “out of our league” and, for the most part, that’s what this lecture was for me. Jan Zwicky’s presentation, though clear, articulate and mind-blowingly intelligent, left me more dazed than enlightened. Her use of mathematical examples to explain our perception of our surroundings left me confused and grasping for the safe ground of the literature and poetry. As I was sitting in the auditorium at Camosun College listening to her speak, I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only person under 30 in the room, which may have explained why others in the audience were nodding and laughing while I sat paralyzed in the stands. However, toward the end of the lecture I began to get a more solid footing on the material.

I particularly enjoyed Zwicky’s segment about the joy that we derive from obtaining meaning, and how a harder struggle can result in greater joy.  The lecture genuinely impressed me when Zwicky insightfully remarked that we have become too satisfied with the “sugar rush” of understanding simple things. Zwicky insisted that meaning needs to advance and evolve into insight into realty, and that we should forgo “superficial pops” of understanding in favour of more durable insights. Zwicky concluded by asserting that writers, particularly poets, have a great responsibility to allow readers to experience their insights—in other words, that they must show the path to their insights in order that readers experience the insight for themselves. She stressed the importance of this evolution and cultivation of meaning in our modern day world, which is rooted in ecological and economic strife. Though this seemed a rather heavy note to end on, the lecture was still deeply inspiring and received a standing ovation.

It was wonderful to have the opportunity to engage with Zwicky’s insights into poetry, philosophy and human understanding in general. I suggest that anyone passionate about or interested in poetry attend one of her lectures, even if they think it may be “out of their league.”

Senica Maltese is a BA student focusing on Honours English and Writing.