On Imagism

Imagism was a powerful movement in the early part of the twentieth century, with proponents like Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound. It is interesting that it arose around the time when photography began its explosions. To fix an image in the mind. Are the emotions rendered null and void at the moment the snapshot is taken? Is it a passing beauty (or ugliness) that stops us in our tracks? Do we stop to think, or do we just absorb? It is believed in some cultures that the camera “kills,” and in common usage we speak of a photo “shoot.” There is something permanently fixed about images. Some of Margaret Atwood’s most memorable writing involve the “fixing of the eye”–the camera’s final word.

I loved the Imagists when I encountered them. The image is powerful and extends into all art forms. I wonder what this means–in the grander scheme of things.

Here are some historical insights on the Imagist Movement, originally posted in Modern American Poetry:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/imagism.htm

/ez

Who is poetry for?

Article that asks whether or not poets should be accountable, whether or not poetry should be more mainstream…comments??

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/02/is-jeremy-paxman-right-new-poetry-inaccessibilty

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN THE INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN THE INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

With the recent announcement of Canadian short-fiction writer Alice Munro as this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature, many are wondering what this holds for the perception of Canada as a literary nation. 

                

Certain nations have an incontestable status as literary powerhouses and no matter their country of origin, little evidence is needed to convince most avid readers of the literary importance of countries such as: the U.S, U.K, France, Russia, Ireland, etc. However, many less populous nations are overshadowed by these literary behemoths and Canada is no exception. 

                

Asking them who their favourite Canadian author is will solicit from many Canadians only blank stares and umms and uhhs, before stumbling upon the names of Atwood or Richler. Even within Canada extensive knowledge of the Canadian literary canon is largely limited to those involved in it and despite the efforts of the Canadian literary community and the government to promote Canadian literature, most Canadians read far fewer domestic works than international ones.

                

Canadian prose and poetry has long been overshadowed, but change may be in sight. By receiving the Nobel Prize, Munro has been internationally recognized as one of the most important living writers and as interest in her work grows so too may interest in Canadian literature as a whole. Munro’s lifetime achievement has put Canadian literature in the headlines and brought with it the hope that it will be seen there far more often.

– Connor Mellegers

   Intern

   Vallum: Contemporary Poetry

Congratulations to Yi-Mei Tsiang, Winner of the TenWordTenDay Poetry Invitational!

Tags

art, arts, award, contest winner, found poetry, found poetry contest, montreal, online poetry contest, poetry, poetry contest, poetry contest winner, Toronto, Writing

Thank you to everyone who entered the TenWordTenDay Poetry Invitational! The competition was fierce and we were thrilled to have so many excellent pieces to choose from.

Congratulations to Yi-Mei Tsiang for her wining poem “First Train Ride.” Ms. Tsiang will receive a chapbook of her choice from the Vallum Chapbook Series and her poem will be featured on this site and in Vallum’s memo.

First Train Ride

Yi-Mei Tsiang

First train ride and my daughter’s

face is pressed to the glass. She kneels

by the window, and even the small rounded hills look glacial

with November’s early frost.

I’m touched by the arc of her spine,

the intensity which coils in her body

like a taut spring. Her gaze is as precise

as mathematics. Nothing can escape

her catalogue of passing miracles.

We’re travelling to Toronto, we’ve explained,

to the funhouse, the circus, the zoo. Still, disembarking,

she clings to the windows, cries

with all the frantic adrenalin of grief.

We pry her fingers off, carry her kicking

and screaming; her boots fall and tumble over the station

floor. One is caught in the cleft between the tracks and the platform

and just before my husband reaches to retrieve it,

a train blows by and the boot

is thrown into the air, a black bird,

a final miracle.

Bio: Yi-Mei Tsiang is the author of A Flock of Shoes (Annick Press). Her full-length poetry collection, Sweet Devilry is forthcoming in Spring 2011 with Oolichan. She also has two new books forthcoming with Annick Press, The Dog Doesn’t Eat Jam and a book of non-fiction on ancient China. She is currently completing UBC’s MFA program and is a graduate from the Humber School of Writing. Yi-Mei currently teaches Creative Writing for UBC’s Booming Ground program.

Congratulations again to our winner!

Vallum: Top Ten

So, we’re moving offices, soonish.  This got me thinking about Vallum’s past in that lazy way you do when you dig through all your stuff and find things that you haven’t looked at in yonks but are really awesome, so it takes you five hours to pack one drawer since you stopped to look at that photo or read that old manuscript.  Anyhoo, I digress.

In one week, we’re launching our own Vallum Top Ten, where we’ve collected nominations from readers to determine popular parts of the Vallum issues that have gone past.  We’ve banged them all onto our FTP server and this Friday, they will go live and people will be able to vote for their favourites over the end of summer. 

Please come and vote!

Off Topic Readables

Tags

literature, martel, reading, stephen harper, yann, yann martel

Yann Martel is quite the evangelist. On his website What is Stephen Harper Reading, he chronicles his quest to bring “stillness” to the life of our Prime Minister, a project inspired by his visit to the House of Commons approximately two years ago. Martel explains that “I was thinking that to have a bare-bones approach to arts funding, as the present Conservative government has, to think of the arts as mere entertainment, to be indulged in after the serious business of life, that—in conjunction with retooling education so that it centres on the teaching of employable skills rather than the creating of thinking citizens—is to engineer souls that are post-historical, post-literate and pre-robotic; that is, blank souls wired to be unfulfilled and susceptible to conformism at its worst—intolerance and totalitarianism—because incapable of thinking for themselves, and vowed to a life of frustrated serfdom at the service of the feudal lords of profit.”

Martel’s words are far more eloquent than mine, but reading them re-energized my desire to read, and also to seek stillness in my own life. Martel wants more; he does not proclaim a desire to educate Harper, but to speak to his stillness. He has sent Harper one book every two weeks with a letter enclosed; each book is chronicled on the website. This has been a long project. Harper has received his 52nd book, and has sent one reply through a secretary. I don’t know whether Martel is daunted by this.

We have experienced a period of extreme financial upheaval. Things that seemed rock solid have crumbled away like so much dust; people are frustrated and fearful. It has struck me, as we write our grants, that this is the practicality of literature. It points to the lasting nature of our humanity; it articulates permanence despite fragility.

Brief Reflection on Winter

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creeley, helen zisimatos, poet, poetry, robert creeley, winter, zisimatos

One of my favourite poets is Robert Creeley (1926-2005). Now, in the midst of winter, I am reading his collected poems and marvelling at the apparent ease with which this master poet spills out depth and beauty onto the page. Creeley’s poem “Winter” resonates with truths we all know about winter on this side of the world:

Snow lifts it
by slowing

the movement expected,
makes walking

slower, harder,
makes face ache,

eyes blur, hands fumble,
makes the day explicit,

the night quiet,
the outside more so

and the inside glow
with warmth, with people

if you’re lucky, if
world’s good to you,

won’t so simply
kill you, freeze you.

(The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley1975 – 2005)

I thought this poem would bring some warmth to us, with its brevity and yet with its thoughtfulness. It brings the details of winter out, and makes the special moments with people, in a café even, resonate in our minds. Yes, if we are lucky and the “world’s good to us” we’ll have some warmth this winter.

Poetry: an honest discussion

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audio, criticism, jane hope, podcasts to listen to, poetry magazine

So we got our office copy of Poetry, which I looked for our ad, read the Langston Hughes and then stopped dead.

Well, my first reaction, was – oh right, Poetry has a podcast, and then I laughed. But maybe I should back up a little bit.

If you look into the Letters of the Editors section, you will find a letter from the poetry group of the Treemont Retirement Community, in Texas. They have worked their way through several substantial collections over the course of four years, including the work of Garrison Keillor, and decided that a group subscription to Poetry would be very stimulation. They were not pleased with the end product, saying that there was “no rhyme and very little reason” and complaining that the poems “are neither enjoyable nor enlightening”.

Ouch.

To give Poetry due credit, they published the letter and interviewed the poetry group on their podcast, which usually serves as an audio tour of the newest magazine – which is not meant to be derogatory, it’s interesting to listen to.

I encourage listening to the podcast – I think it is interesting…and hilarious.  I don’t think poetry is obliged to be accessible.  However, taste is personal, and I think it is a fascinating moment of justification and understanding.  I particularly like when they discuss the role of humour in poetry, and the role of the writer or intellectual in society.