ditch,

It provides an interesting perspective on Canadian poetry when you consider that French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud was contemporary with the Canadian Confederation poet Archibald Lampman. While Rimbaud was writing his madly ecstatic prose poems, stretching the definition of poetry and re-shaping the French language, Lampman was contemplating “the scented swaths that gleam” and “purple mints and daisies gemmed with gold,” describing a bucolic Canadian landscape resembling Wordsworth’s gentle English countryside more than a harsh world of rugged forests, raging rivers and bitter winters. Canadian poetry has lumbered along ever since in a predominately narrative, linear form terminally mired in a romanticized Nature.

The artistic movements that have shaped poetry in the rest of the world have largely passed Canada by. There are nods in Canadian literature to imagism and modernism and surrealism and postmodernism (Milton Acorn even took a stab at beat poetry with the long version of “I Shout Love”), but nothing has been able to sway Canadian verse from the narrative, personal, reflective, quietist path it has forged for itself. This is not meant to disparage any of those included in the Canadian canon; we have some exceptional writers in Canada, but on the whole they have not been very adventurous.

One sign of where Canada stands on the world stage is how often Canadian poets are anthologized in international anthologies. The answer is: rarely. The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (Vintage, 1996) does not contain any Canadian poets, although six Caribbean writers are represented. The Harvill Book of Twentieth-century Poetry in English (Harvill Press, 2000) has no Canadian writers in 728 pages representing over 100 poets. Even the International Poetry Web features poets from Australia and Zimbabwe, among 30 other countries, but nothing from Canada. Poems for the Millennium, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 1998) contains two Canadian poets in 855 pages of international selections: Nicole Brossard and bpNichol, both Governor General's Award winners.

bpNichol won the Governor General’s Award for his concrete poetry in 1970, but non-linear styles like this have been pretty much forced off the mainroad and into the ditch by the narrative, linear, quietist, intensely personal voice that has come to characterize Canadian poetry. It's interesting that Canada recognized concrete poetry in 1970, when the first book of concrete poetry was published by Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris in 1918. As always, Canada is fifty years behind everyone else.

So what is “alternative” poetry? Well, anything that is not linear, narrative, quietist, reflective, intensely personal, sentimental or romantic.

But more than that: it is poetry that strains at the edges of the very medium that carries it - the word; it is poetry in which the form is the content and the content is the form; it is poetry that crosses the boundary between the written word and visual art; it is poetry that explores the limits of language, and the limits of the ability of language to express meaning, and the limits of meaning itself; it is poetry that reconfigures syntax, puts the familiar into unfamiliar contexts; poetry that shows us the world and our relationship to it in a new way; poetry that fills the gaps and blurs the distinctions between the objective and subjective; poetry that stretches our understanding, forcing us to re-evaluate our definitions and preconceptions; it is poetry that the printed page cannot confine.

But more than that, it is poetry that integrates us into the multi-dimensionality of the world; it is poetry that experiences terror and laughter and fear and uncertainty and hesitancy and joy and love and excitement all at once. Traditionally, poetry has been compartmentalized, with poems being written on specific themes; but what if you write on all themes at the same time? What if you write a poem with your whole being instead of just your intellect or just your heart? What if we are shown the terror and the laughter in the same line?
                The works of our alternative poets are fragment parts implying a vast and complex whole. Some alternative poems have only a middle, some only a beginning, some only an ending, and some neither beginning, middle, nor end. The pieces are part of a larger work, the work that is our stumbling, silly, ironic, disappointing, confusing, jumbled, funny, frustrating, giggling, horny, disastrous, lusciously heartbreaking sentence in time.
                These poems are not about life, they are life.

Not all alternative poets attempt this inferential inclusion, or even aspire to it. The very uniqueness of each alternative poem makes it difficult, if not impossible, to generalize about alternative poetry. The term "alternative" doesn't refer to a particular poetic or school or style, it is a broad term that includes everything outside the fuzzy borders of the mainstream.

Whatever you thought were the defining features of poetry - image, metaphor, rhythm, line, unifying idea, consistent voice, beauty, truth - you will find an alternative poet who will throw the definition out, stand it on its head, turn it inside out, twist it sideways and stretch it both ways to Sunday. We are used to thinking of language as a means of communication, but what if it is not used to communicate? What if it is used as a place to store furniture; or as a screwdriver to fix a carburetor; or used as something other than language entirely? Non-linear poetry is a challenge to the deductive premises of our culture - not merely to destroy the old, but to forge new connections, to find the hidden currents, to reveal the lightning inside the obscure clouds.

Can this happen in Canada? Well, it is happening, and has been happening for some time, as the poets represented on this site can attest. It's time Canadian poetry got out of the ditch and took its place on the world stage.