As a Teacher’s Assistant, I give lectures on poetry writing for the class Introduction to Creative Writing 202 at UBC. In every lecture, I stress the need for concrete langugage—language that evokes the senses, paints vivid pictures, uses metaphor and simile etc. It is always a joy to receive my students’ assignments and see that these words have fallen on the ears of active listeners.
My Comments
Richard’s poems are bursting with talent—great lines, clever images and metaphors, and their structure is sound, understandable. Often, young writers use poetry as a place to pour out their hearts (and so it should be!) without concern for the crafting, the fine-tuning of poetry writing. I think the premise of Richard’s piece—trying to understand national identity’s intersection with personal identity—is well communicated by the scenes in the poem: moving across land by bus while drawing the land you’re moving across. Notice this fantastic line: “And the morning creeps in / like a bad idea.” This is a great simile for ocean swallowing islands: “Like a clown’s mouth to the rail cars at the fun house.”
Northern Light
In the column of the national newspaper,
I sketch a map of Canada.
Long provincial borders,
wide territorial boundaries.
Blots of my pen for the lakes,
drifts of my pencil of the prairies.
The soft black press of memorial services smooth against my hand,
as I work the ink of the national narrative into the canvas and columns.
I listen to the juddering of my bones,
as the bus’s engine whines and rhymes beneath me.
The road wraps itself through the pass,
as the serpent through Eve’s ear.
The northern skies merge from the off-ramp onto the highway,
while the modest sun rises through the radioactive mist of the mountains.
And the morning creeps in,
like a bad idea.
I have trouble with Quebec and Ontario,
but everything south-west of the Hudson comes with ease.
Manitoba as a grasping hand with amputated fingers and varicose veins,
Saskatchewan as an amoral cinder block with ambushing aneurysms.
Alberta…oh Alberta,
my face is pressed so firmly against your edges that I have lost all sight of you.
BC as a scraped knee buckling under the weight of the Yukon,
cross to the Maritimes as shrapnel blown off in the Somme.
I try to remember the islands of the North,
before the Soviet Ocean swallows them up.
Like a clown’s mouth to the rail cars at the fun house.
Out the window the tree line builds and then breaks,
builds and breaks.
The rock face cradles the road,
past prison poles of dynamite holes.
I push my skull against the thrilling condensation on the glass,
the scent of the upcoming day hints upon clairvoyance.
I can smell nothing,
absolutely nothing.
I haul the Trans Canada across the entire page.
Cutting through photos and dates and decisions of funeral homes.
The ribbon of tarmac and ink slices through it all.
The steal pen drags like a nail across the script.
It is the cruxifictory sound of our past failures.
I sit and look at the scarred body of the country,
And I wonder if I can come home yet.
By Richard Kemick
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My Comments
This poem is the shadow of a loud literary voice and its potential is in the line “Hello stranger—have something to tell you / I want to be Ariel after she died.” What a fascinating idea, immediately arresting. Everything that follows from this line is quite lovely. In counseling her on this poem, I told her it was my favourite of all her pieces. For revision, I suggested she paint a better image of the scene around this girl at the coffee shop, make the setting cleear. Though the poem is not cohesive, wholly understandable, I know she’ll revise it. She’ll grow into her writerly boots.
café
If your lips sit roundly upon your face
and there are lips on plates
and your footsteps aren’t really your feet
and the people that you meet
aren’t really their smiles or flickering eyes
Can you hear the silence? in the space
between?
the rising foam, unseen?
Can you hear it? saying
sssssssssshhhhhh
then you shake my hand, and it is hushed.
Hello stranger—I have something to tell you
I want to be Ariel after she died
and join the children of the air
colourless
We do not have to cut off our hair
And the prince can be left to his sleeping
Can you hear
Here
at this table and this chair
hear the sound
of waves
~Alyzee Lakhani, March 2011