>> Announcer: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Rob Casper: All right, everyone.
Welcome to the Library of Congress in our Mumford room.
My name is Rob Casper I'm the head of the poetry
and literature center here and I'm thrilled and delighted
to welcome you to the first ever US Canada capitol poetry exchange
featuring poets Suzanne Buffam, Liz Howard, and David O'Meara.
Before we begin, let me ask you to turn off your cell phones
and any other electronic devices that you have.
I'm going to make sure that minor turnoff.
That might interfere with the event.
Second, please note that this program is being recorded
and by participating you gave us permission
for future use of the recording.
Let me also tell you a little bit
about the poetry and literature center.
We are home to the poet laureate consultant in poetry,
and we put on 30 to 40 public programs like this one every year.
In fact, next Monday we honor the Library of Congress prize
in American fiction winner, Marilyn Robinson
with a high-powered panel discussion on fiction,
faith, and the imagination.
On Tuesday we feature poet Dana Levin in conversation
with Washington Post book world editor and video star, Ron Charles.
To find out more about these and other programs here at the Library
of Congress in and around DC you can sign our sign-up sheet which is
out there on the foyer and you can also visit our website,
www.loc.gov/poetry.
And now on to this afternoon's event.
You can read about each of our Canadian poets in your print program
which should be on your seats next to you.
They will each read for 10 minutes in alphabetical order
and then they will engage
in a moderated discussion with Monty Reid.
We will leave time at the end of the program for your questions
and afterwards we hope you buy copies of books by our readers
which are for sale in the back
and I'm sure they would be happy to sign them as well.
I would like to give a special thanks to the Canadian embassy
and now Cronin counselor of the embassy for supporting this event.
Our neighbor to the north is currently celebrating its 150th--
the 150th anniversary of its confederation.
We have great little pins outside in the foyer which you should pick up
and help us in celebrating this great anniversary.
And finally, back to our moderator, the inimitable Monty Reid.
Monty is the driving force behind not only this event,
but the whole concept of an exchange of Canadian and US totes.
He is also a celebrated poet himself of more
than a dozen poetry collections including a collection of new
and collected poems, Crawlspace published by House of Nancy in 1993
and metataccio placentae [phonetic] published by Brick in 2016.
A three-time nominee for the governor general's award for poetry
and three-time winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for poetry,
Monty is the festival director at verse best,
auto was international poetry Festival.
And now here's my little punny [phonetic] moment.
I'm delighted to the core of my constitution that Monty
and I can connect our work to promote poetry
in our respective capitals and in so doing gave a federal boost
to the currency of the arts.
Please join me in welcoming Monty Reid.
[ Applause ]
>> Monty Reid: Well, thank you very kindly for that.
I am of course very pleased to be here.
And thank you all for coming out and on a busy afternoon.
I'm here representing verse best
which is auto was international poetry Festival.
It is as Rob said, we've just finished.
Just a few days ago our seventh festival
and it's been a huge success.
And we were trying to build on that success by expanding our activities
and making sure that we can attract international guests
to the festival including Americans.
We have always had Americans at the festival but it's always a stretch
for us to be able to afford it and the possibility of working
in conjunction with the Library of Congress
over a protracted period is really very beneficial to us
and I hope to the library as well.
I don't have too much to say other than that.
Other than I'm delighted to be here in the company of three--
I was going to say young, but youngish Canadian poets all
of whom have a substantial track record but probably aren't
that well-known here in Washington.
And who have some very, very interesting and provocative poetry
for you here this afternoon.
So, they are in your programs I'm just going
to turn it right over to them.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Hi.
You can hear me, I think.
Things are well organized here.
I'm Suzanne Buffam.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's a great honor to be here and I feel like I should--
there should be more flashes from what I've seen but anyway,
I'm going to just impose upon you.
I promise my daughter I would document the attendance.
So there's actually more than I expected.
Thank you so much for coming I'm going to jump right in
and set the timer so I don't exceed--
All right.
I'm going to read from a book that just came
out last spring called a pillow book
and it's a book length somewhat narrative poem about pillows.
Among other things.
I should say it is a poem but mostly it's in prose.
So there are little pros paragraphs with lists
that interspersed throughout the unfolding.
Among the oldest living pillows in the world today is a smooth block
of unpainted wood with a wide crack running through its middle
and a shallow indentation on the top.
It was found in the tomb of an Egyptian mummy
in the fourth dynastic town of Abilene
on the banks of the Nile River.
If you came across it in a field,
you might assume it had just fallen from a cart.
If you found it by the sea,
you might suppose it had been knocked loose
from a sailboat in a storm.
You might kick it or pick it up and toss it like a bottle off the dock.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote lists.
Abraham Lincoln took midnight walks.
Tallulah Bankhead paid a series of young caddies to hold her hand
in the dark as it did Marcel produced.
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb so he could read after dark.
I put a piece of paper under my pillow at night
and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Wrote Henry David Thoreau who once spent a fortnight
in a roofless cabin with his head on a pillow of bricks.
There are two kinds of insomniacs those who fall asleep easily only
to wake up hours later to toss on the pillows until Don and those
who toss on their pillows from the start only
to drift off just long enough to be roused at dawn
by the crows a little game I like to play when I crawl into bed
at the end of a long day of anything these days,
is to guess which kind tonight I will be.
And then there's a list of books I'd like to read someday.
Which I never imagined reading in this library.
"I and It" by Martin Buber.
"Queen Leer" by William Shakespeare.
"Moby Dick" by Gertrude Stein.
"Endgame" by Dr. Seuss.
"Complete Poems" by Sappho.
"The Interpretation of Dreams" by Jorge Louis Borges.
"Koffka
for Dummies" by Franz Koffka.
"My Mistake" by Laura Bush, which seems quaint now.
"What Would Jesus Do" by Jesus Christ.
Sei Shonagon's pillow book which has passed the last several nights
in the dim glow of my pet cell tokina II [phonetic] headlamp set
on low provides an exhaustive catalog of petty grievances
as pressing today as they were a millennium ago.
One has gone to bed and is about to doze off the lady complains
in her protracted lift of hateful things.
When mosquito appears announcing himself in a reedy voice.
One can actually feel the wind made by his wings
and slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.
I would add to this list as I often feel it incumbent upon me to do,
the endless intermittent tingling through the half open window screen
of one's deaf neighbors wind chimes the predawn post amorous blather
of young robins from the rooftops
and one's husband squinting peevishly from his pillow at night
when one turns on the bathroom light
to fish one's dripping headlamp from the toilet bowl.
Kings and commoners alike have known the value of a good pillow forever.
From Quito to Cairo to Chicago to Jan Yang examples can be found
in museums all over the world.
During my sleepless hours some nights I try
to imagine the whole collection.
Melatonin, Lunesta, NyQuil, Z-Quill [phonetic], Ativan, Ambien,
Lorazepam, trazodone, warm milk, hot baths, counting sheep,
counting backwards from 1000 in French still I toss and turn
to the night with a pillow on my head and another clutched
like a mule between my knees.
Sei was her father's name.
Shonagon her father's rank.
For a brief span of time at the turn of the 10th century,
we know that she spent her nights behind a thin paper screen recording
her fugitive [inaudible] by candlelight with an ink stick
on rice paper behind the bolted high end gates.
We know that she slept when she managed to do
so on a small hollow pillow made of polished bamboo.
Things to buy, things to fix, things to fold, things to freeze,
things to paint, things to unpack, things to order, things to renew,
things to revise, things to discard,
things to dismantle, things to destroy.
The closest I come to writing poems these days are the lists I jot
down in the little blue notebook I keep beside my pillow
to remind myself years hence how my middle years were spent.
And then a list of unmarked days.
I don't know what today is the international day of,
but it is no doubt something.
But there are still some things that are unacknowledged
and this is a list of some of those.
Be Labor Day.
World Day against the abuse of perfume.
World backtalk prevention day.
International day for the complete eradication of goatees.
International day for the right
to the truth concerning hidden calories in juice.
International-- United Nations international day in support
of the victims of scream fatigue.
International day in remembrance of diaries altered and burned.
The day of the sleepwalker.
Day of the streetwalker.
International day of the over ripe pear.
Daylight spending stay.
Divorce day world Day for the promulgation and diffusion of fog.
Anti-dabbler day.
Doris Day day.
World Day for the remembrance of the tiny hands
of the Toronto source Rex.
I can swim, her Majesty proclaims her pillow one morning.
By this she means that she can cling to my neck in the shallow end
of the University pool while I clap and sing a bouncy song about rain
to the tune of I'm a little teapot
with a flagging chorus of other mothers.
In the locker room, the toddlers shrink and squirm
in sagging swim diapers while we womenfolk sigh
and hide behind our towels.
Bolted to the ceiling in the corner
above the sinks the TV perpetually tuned to CNN crackles
with a constant chatter of catastrophe unfolding
on the far side of the screen.
Her Majesty I am grateful to observe has not yet spotted.
And I'll stop right there.
Thanks, very much.
[ Applause ]
I guess I should introduce Liz.
Is that what happens?
[ Inaudible Speakers ]
>> Liz Howard: Hello.
Thank you for that beautiful reading, Suzanne.
That was such gorgeous work.
Thank you so much for having me here today and thank you so much for--
to Monty for taking the initiative to get this all started
and it's a real honor and pleasure to be here reading today.
And I'll read to you three poems from my book
"Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent".
I'll begin with a poem called Boreal Swing.
My mother hunted moose as a child my grandfather taught her how
to field dress a bull.
Make an incision from throat
to the pelvis the abdominal cavity emptied haul him
up between two pines the body inverted antlers almost grazing
the soil.
Each hind limb leeched to a trunk above to allow the flesh
to cool then she'd climb inside the open chest fix her toes along the
ledge of two ribs and with a kick
to the bull's left shoulder, he sent her swinging.
This poem begins with an epigraph by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
It's called-- the poem is called Think Tent.
I am my world, the microcosm.
Hospitality the first demand what is your name?
The city bound to be so I entered to dream a science
that would name me daughter
and launch beyond grief the old thoracic cause myocardium a blood
orange foundry handed down by the humeral anatomists and not
to be inside my own head perpetually,
not simply Wittgenstein's girl,
but an infinite Citizen at a shaking tent.
If you are in need of an answer consult a [inaudible] scientific
rigor psychoanalysis the unconscious a construct method amphibious
of two minds.
That's the translator, her task to receive the call that comes
down the barrel of the future.
All of us a Congress of salves, a vibrational chorus I know myself
to be a guest in your mind a grand Lodge of everything I long to know
and hold within this potlatch we call the present moment.
If I speak of the night speak its illicit cerebrum
of branches and backseats.
Speak beyond our future a thinkable earn my empirical training,
my non-status brow ridge indivisible
and glistening every time I tease a thread of being
from its moment in standard Time.
Let's elevate the coordinates of distress take it all
in I'm all in and over the limit.
The limit the illuminative the lumens the mens rea the loom
to be a shop keep in the showroom
of nouns what to purchase and what to disavow.
Speak with saffron.
Speak of just the small bits atomic.
Speak of the inevitable curve in the data all foreclosed upon
in the glimmering like a good pitch in the brine of night.
I haven't nearly enough heat here in this stakeout.
The sky died and I'm its enema in the pitch tickets.
I have fingers with which to squish, pin cherries and rosehips, Dogwood.
I have the gun to hear a rosary of pure tones, the colony.
Here is called toward disorder.
Citizens, I have never been dishonest in my horror.
The underclass of our era a requisite paternity test.
Dominus in excelsis.
Our foisted self-addendum was called against our lack of surprise.
Everything that always happens as it happens to you in the soiled ledger
of our days I know you know.
We are forever evident in our swampy coda attending the land is the land
is its own belonging to itself.
In a laboratory of thought, lifting paper cups of black foam
up to our mouths without cameras everything becomes the fringe
of our interior.
Affect is an aid to cognition,
shameless in its missionary position of standard Time.
Another day unmoored from its twin hysterical about music, our ontogeny
and iterative gasket I knew it as a sphere flinched
in my portal vein thickening and bleeding and posturing all
that happened upon our digital sidestep the distinction plus it's
unfettered the open stones face.
It was as if we almost knew but then the scene changed a false shore
above the original.
The last piece I'll read is sort of a--
almost a companion poem to that piece.
It appears towards the end of the book.
It's called "North by South".
It was as if I really knew but then the dream changed.
Stalactites under Mexico become the show ponies
of our throne-ness [phonetic].
Gradually turning into an estuary of blood and soy.
Blessed unfettered the open stones face there are more totem moments
where the stars have drunk the ocean.
On a self-similar confessional flight path
over the northern hemisphere, this account of light
as an acquired characteristic became propositional just
as every forest would come to speak to us as a verb.
Sweet citizen, I know you as I know myself.
A fictive province of cells within Doppler range.
Oh, body sensate.
Your telepathy so impatient.
Soon you'll know hope is no nutrient,
no last word on forgiveness.
Opiate moment unlatch the skull of a lake from your trophy of red snow.
We are in this for the killing fields of every biome.
Prosperity glittering dryad felled on the horizon.
If there are poems inside the camel, brush it's hump with simple syrup.
Ants come and eat the flesh away.
Poetry evaporates from the wound your boots fill with milk
in the lecture theater of the poets stand with their camels.
We have no words, our faces became indistinguishable.
Is this an indigenous or Occidental dream?
Note the presence of wildlife and anxiety about money.
We stand at the lectern of origin.
We stand here not only to be counted.
I felt I needed to walk far out into the woods through the woods
to a river and walk upon the waters of that river dissolving
and the silt of me returns to Hudson Bay
to the Arctic Ocean is dispersed further into the Beaufort Sea.
I often dreamt of one small.
Napping beside a book of maps.
In another dream it's evening.
I'm to photograph three women who faced me
with their babies bundled in their arms.
Poet, scientist, Anishinabek [phonetic] smile at me and one
by one the babies explode into flames.
That same year I sat looking out of the living room window
at a boulder across the street.
A glacial erotic split into three pieces
by the growth of two birch trees.
I remember when that stone was whole.
My mother said behind me this is what life does.
In a tradition not quite ablated by pox, TB,
[inaudible] Christ the dreaming self as corporeal in its endeavors
as in a waking state I go somewhere into a kind of felicity unforgiving.
Taking our birth names, we headed south vaulting the tractionless
spagnum [phonetic] for a credit card.
Our only limit will be of language.
Mike Carreon could be your carry-on only I'm not a corpse but a citizen.
I tie a knot around the throat of all knowledge.
Insist I know where my own body was
when the earth retired from intimacy.
When presented with history in the form of and...
I must continue.
Farrell, and to the court of words December, December of my mind.
Launch toward more that Norad [phonetic] knows
of the Tiga [phonetic].
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> David O'Meara: Thanks, Liz.
That was amazing.
I usually blank when the reader ahead of me is reading
because I'm going I'm going up next, but I was listening.
Suzanne, I'm going to steal your prepared water here.
I'll trade you.
I'll give you my later.
I'm going to start with a new poem.
Which is a dangerous thing to do because this is recorded.
I'll edit it and then I'll say what happened?
I think we've all may be experienced the futility
of using a humane trap for a mouse.
But this is called "I Carry a Mouse to the Park Beside the Highway".
I couldn't smash a gray life.
Believe it and violence under the hammer slap of the wire.
That poor change purse of bones who jingled for crumbs
on our kitchen counter all summer from a station behind the stove
where no one could reach or follow through a dime sized hole.
I portioned the aged cheddar and un-snapping the lid
of the trap rigged with a humane weight triggered one-way ramp placed
the bait inside.
Dressed in a jacket before dawn, I forced myself
to be a cartoon still wet.
In sneakers, I rented 30 minutes from time
and lifted the tin palanquin quivering mouse inside its brief
flight a bump to spirit level across the vacant intersection
through an underpass almost too early for joggers.
Since each hour is a sickle of a fighting chance,
I tested fates etiquette and flattered the cat's mercy.
I was thinking of the grasses traffic as I tripped the trap
over between thin shoulder and passing headlights near park gates
where the mouse is positive typed into a green verge of tomato vines.
While all that hour the sun's creeping bleach became a chandelier
and I turned for home morning other alarms.
The bustle of wage and email.
No less or more than fear and boredom.
The Iliad of our quiet lives.
I feel obliged to read my only Washington poem.
Mainly because a few of the things it refers to are
within the very close proximity of here.
The subject of this home is William Safire who I'm sure many
of you are familiar with who wrote a very popular column
in the New York Times for a number of years before it was failing.
And it was called-- it was etymology serious called on language.
But he was also a speechwriter for Richard Nixon.
And during the moon launch the Apollo 11 moon launch,
they realized the biggest window for a disaster was not
when the rocket was being launched from Earth but in fact
when the lunar module-- lunar lander was going to be launched off
of the moon after the mission was almost complete.
Because they never had been able to properly test it.
They had created you know different conditions to try to simulated
but not to ever actually do it.
So, they asked Safire to write a speech that Nixon would read
to the American people if something failed.
And he wrote a speech which is now in the national archives called
"In Event of Moon Disaster".
And Nixon would read it on television and they would the
astronauts on the moon, obviously..
So I-- you know, being one who suffers
from writers block I thought this would be an interesting subject.
So the poem is also called "In Event of Moon Disaster".
After Borman, NASA's liaison calls
and urges some alternative posture should things go south unforeseen
glitch, miscalculation, technical, whatever.
Leaving Armstrong and Aldrin stranded on the moon.
Does Safire walk or run to the Oval Office?
The president's aides Russell around the furniture the minds touchy
and tentative like bees in a Dispatch.
You can imagine Dick's face when advised, cut all communication,
commend their souls to the deepest of the deep like a burial
at sea and call their wives.
As for text, it's left to Safire to get the spirit right.
Christ, this will be out of the speech of his life
or words that are never uttered.
But he's no pacer.
There he goes on Penn Avenue ditching the ride into a deli
with a government driver insisting he'll take the few last blocks
on foot.
He wants the air of a summer night and an uncluttered sense
of the Quotidien [phonetic].
The stars might pull at time like taffy out there exhaling light
but it's reassuring to know
that in the suburbs someone's washing dishes, a curtain is lifted
by the breeze and surely, there's a midget team looking for a homer
under a bug infested ballpark lights.
At the meat counter he watches them shave a sheaf of pastrami
onto the wax sheets pop bread and many packs of mustard
into paper sacks provisions for what's going to be an all-nighter
in a toe to toe with a typewriter.
If only he could peel back the top of his head
to reveal slick words laid neatly and glistening like a cash
of silver found when a sardine key gets twisted around.
But all he can see our two dead astronauts canned in welded metal.
Their ingress above the modules ladder like Jacobs climbed to heaven
and everything a question
of how anyone would spend their last few hours.
Would you stay inside?
Waiting until the oxygen goes critical?
Tapping the dead switch for the Ascent engine and lonely Morse?
Or rather pull and [inaudible] and wander
out into the cold for one last stroll?
The whirling white like tickertape.
Safire is slow.
Slow is the thought of it.
All night he'll haunt his office taunted by shades of scenario.
The moon's milky glow hung in its pure potential stalled
like those satellites of paper balled up into the waste.
The future and empty shape still left to fill with explanation.
I've never been to Washington before,
so I hope there's a deli on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Otherwise that poem is lacking in real research.
This is another potential disaster poem.
It's called "The Game".
The trees skitter past.
A rush of verticals at the roadside.
I'm 15 in the rearview off
to play the softball tournament at Golden Lake.
There's Tommy, Trevor, and me.
And Trevor's older brother Kevin
who shit-grins [phonetic] behind the steering wheel getting us there
for the 10 AM pitch.
Somewhere down these back routes just for kicks,
he guns the rusted chassis at rising humps in the road.
He did trying to Jimmy us loose from gravity and slip a fat envelope
of air between our wheels and the earth.
Each time we landed, our tailbones jab the vinyl seats
and the stitched gloves jostle
in our laps their punched palms a darker tan than last summer.
Kevin's loving the morning breeze forced through the rolled
down windows, but especially the looks of panic
on his passenger spaces as if we were clean plush cushions he'd been
itching to knock the stuffing from.
Watch this, he says.
Pushing the gas pedal to the dusty Matt then charges the wrong side
of the next blind hill.
Our heads are numb.
Our stomachs roll in clutch.
I catch my own eye in the side mirror giddy with a look of death.
Every bit as close as it might appear.
And I'll read two quick short ones.
Can't do a Canadian poem reading without some snow.
This is a poem about not being able to write a poem which is
about as postmodern as I get.
It's called "The Tennis Courts in Winter".
From Christmas to the end of March I have been trying
to find some clever way to start a poem called
"The Tennis Courts in Winter".
I passed them every day
on my snowbound lurch up Delaware and Cartier.
The Eastside court still posting rules
of play the stiffened board off kilter with a zip tie snapped.
But every chance I get to jot the title down,
was stopped by white below.
My unwritten poem had become the tennis courts.
Frozen to a stop inside a chain-link fence blocked and blank.
The obliterating snow like Revelation in reverse
which of course, is just forgetting.
But I don't forget.
I don't know why the title haunts me.
It might have something to do with potential.
Yesterday I thought of it again though it's been years
since I moved away to this other neighborhood and the snow has come
and gone at least 100 times that.
And another new one called "I Travel".
And thank you so much for listening and coming out.
And thanks much to everyone involved.
This has been wonderful and it's a real honor to be here.
"I Travel".
If I was told I would have to go then I would very much like to stay.
No mystery thriller this, but the trail dries
up as the evidence amasses.
The road goes out as whining, long,
but that's an old song someone else can sing.
Even when it isn't, isn't it always the weather?
It is always the sky viewed three square.
I was hoping to own what I gathered around me
like any ticket it wasn't only the event
but the guaranteed entry I needed.
And it was not what I loved or how though I came
to it finally wiled immense but muted like a snowstorm on the ocean.
There is no truth to our land only the terms of going there.
So I could rush the stage because I don't want
to wait here waving my arms.
Thanks so much.
[ Applause ]
>> Monty Reid: I can see I made the wrong choice here.
It's probably going to be better if I actually sit down,
to which means I need to steal that mic back.
>> David O'Meara: I thought you meant
about the poets you made the wrong choice.
[laughter]
>> Monty Reid I've been known
to make wrong choices, but with poets too.
[laughter]
>> David O'Meara: Dave was a totally bad idea.
[laughter]
>> Monty Reid: This is a discussion part of the program.
And you are certainly welcome to ask whatever questions you might wish.
I do have a couple myself and I'll start off by asking them
and you can certainly join in or you can follow-up however you choose.
One of the things that Canadian poetry is always been accused
of is being exceedingly rural and very much not as involved
with urban life as it might be.
That's clearly changing.
But I see particularly in Liz's work a real interest and involvement
in the natural world again except it's a new natural world.
The nature in Liz's world is I mean it's got Bush and rock and lakes
in it but man, it's got-- it's electric.
And I'd like you to comment just a little bit
about nature in your work.
>> Liz Howard: So I grew up in
rural northern Ontario.
So very much right in the Bush
and that landscape just made a really deep psychic impression in me
as I was you know developing in that landscape and so it's something
that I always carry with me.
And in terms of working out my relationship to that land
through poetry, through language, I wanted to play with this idea
of making the familiar somehow unfamiliar.
Making nature seem something new again and sort of dark and charged
which was sort of more reflective of my experience of it
because you know, the woods like the wilderness is a really gorgeous
beautiful place and it can be a site for you know, personal
and spiritual reflection but it's also a place
where you can quite easily find your death.
>> Monty Reid: You could die.
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
Quite easily.
Quite easily.
So I wanted to convey that sense of wilderness as well
and different relationships that people in the north have
with animal beings and the bodies of animals and just wanting
to convey the fullness and problematics [phonetic]
and visual kind of-- striking the striking sort
of visual imagery that that can create.
>> Monty Reid: I think you've done that really very successfully.
Like I said before the natural world that's there is not the natural
world you would have seen in Canadian poetry in the 70s even.
It's remarkably different and remarkably charged as you say.
Another thing that I think is--
I've seen all of you working with is existing texts.
I mean David you in your most recent book you've got Socrates among other
people and Sei Shonogon
in "The Pillow Book" is a very strong background text
and even the song of Hiawatha could be seen as a kind
of a haunting text in your work, Liz.
I don't know if that suggests a kind of historicism in the poetry
or whether it's just a matching up of existing material.
So I'm curious to know how you use earlier texts in your work
and what is it that attracts you to them?
>> Liz Howard: Suzanne?
>> Suzanne Buffam: Sure.
Yeah. Well, yeah, so my book is really quite directly you know,
invokes this character and historical figure, Shonogon.
Which you know, the book is about not sleeping and much
of those hours are spent and have been spent in my life reading.
And I think probably the true of all poets
that that comes into the conversation.
Or into one's own internal conversations.
So, yeah. I mean in a way the book--
my book is kind of written through her book
and to her in a certain respect.
And that book helped open up formal possibilities for me that I wanted
to be in conversation with.
You know the question of writers block what does one do
when one meets up but read you know turn to other books and that's
for me always where inspiration comes
from above everything else is other people's language.
And so yeah, the history behind the long history--
>> Monty Reid: It's 1000 years old.
>> Suzanne Buffam: -- the long history of text.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[inaudible] And sometimes really old texts can open
up new things in new context.
And that for me also was part of the pleasure
of it was finding this thousand year old form
that actually works beautifully and you know the [inaudible].
You know the Internet blogs and listicals [phonetic]
and all these things that are very contemporary also actually kind
of existed in this form a thousand years ago in Japan that seems
like the sort of earliest blog.
So it adapted to new you know material.
>> David O'Meara: I just fall in saying
that I think you know you're always in conversation with texts
from the past whether it's 10 years ago or thousand years ago.
And as a writer you're always drawn to you want to find some tension
and you want to-- and sometimes that's a question
of deconstructing a prior text or mashing it up.
The thing that Monty was referring to is there's a dialogue in my book
between Socrates and Sid vicious from the Sex Pistols
and they both find themselves in the afterlife and they were sort
of both figures of the dissent-- of dissent in their societies
and I just I was curious to see what would come
about when they would have a conversation and what conclusions
or arguments they would get in about that.
So a certain kind of hopefully, and you know by rubbing two things
that don't seem necessarily the same together can hopefully create a fire
of some sort I would think.
And that's why we do it.
>> Monty Reid: Questions?
Comments?
Well, we can keep going.
One of the other things I think is well one of the things we should do
since we are Canadians here in Washington is to poke
around a little bit at the issue of is there anything
that distinguishes Canadian poetry from our American friends?
I'm not convinced there is anymore.
Everybody reads so widely and so much across borders
so much materials online it's
so easy I'm not convinced there's much difference between Canadian
and American poetry anymore.
But I'd be interested to hear what you guys think.
>> David O'Meara: Well you know I will say that I would put
out that maybe 20 years ago a lot
of Canadian poets read English Irish poets more.
But in the last 20 years there is a far more of an interest
in American poetry in the sense of what influences can happen.
And now it's a mix.
And when we were at the airport I was talking about Emily Berry
who is an English poet on what I find interesting about her work is
that now I think English poets are looking at American poetry
and trying to do something contemporary rather
than you know rhyming quatrains etc. So following
up on what you're saying I do think that it's a much more global sort
of interest in where people are going.
You know? And in the same way,
there is some Canadian stuff that influences thing.
Like I mean and Carson is an example of someone who everyone is trying
to write like to some degree or is looking at you know?
So I think it's become much more of a-- you know--
a mix of people just trying to find a different way into a poem
and creating something interesting or new.
Yes? Wrong?
Right?
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah, no.
I think that's true.
We're not studying creative writing a thousand years ago in Canada.
I-- a lot of the texts were more British and-- and or postcolonial.
And looking to-- I had a teacher who taught a class on postcolonial
that was you know Commonwealth kind of stuff and that looking
to other sort of peripheral texts thinking of Canada
as having a history that peripheral both to a British center
and to an American center and I think that probably is changing.
I haven't lived in Canada for almost 13, 14 years now.
So--
>> Monty Reid: Well, yeah.
I know. And so you're almost
in a privileged position to talk about that.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Monty Reid: Because you've seen you're immersed
in both of those traditions.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah.
Yeah. I guess so.
I mean you are an example.
Liz is an example of a poet younger than I am
who has come up and who is new to me.
You know, and expresses a much more like complex relationship
to literary past than a lot of Canadian poets of my generation
who were more-- somewhat more exclusively influenced may be
by a British tradition and so I do think that's you know--
of a generation where access
is just so much greater and there are so many more small presses
and so many more online forums
to be cross pollinating and pollinated from.
That-- is that-- I mean--
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Did you-- have you found that you are doing a lot
of your reading online and finding access
to international stuff that way?
>> Liz Howard: Oh yeah.
Oh, certainly.
And as best I can answer the question is
that I've found myself sort of emerging from this sort of this sort
of this dense interconnection of influences
that in many instances do have their roots in America
like the language poetry movement Black Mountain school New York
school poets having influences on poets you know sort
of North you know coming north through SUNI Buffalo to Toronto
and also a lot of the connections between the West Coast poets
and the CUNY school of writers--
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah.
>> Liz Howard: -- with black [inaudible] college
and Charles Olsen, Robert Creeley-- Robert Duncan.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah.
Well and that's where a lot of it's like--
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: --
early experimentation in Canada [inaudible]
>> Liz Howard: Well, early experiments-- yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: -- influencing across the border
on that sort of strip up--
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: -- in the coast--
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: -- that is its own kind of culture.
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
So like my poetics I-- the genealogy of whatever my poetics is
at present is sort of coming informed
by that also you know the feminist poetics and texts and writers
who are coming out of the 80s and early 90s in Canada.
And also a bit of crossover influence from sound poets
like the four Horsemen and more recent individuals
like Angela Rawlings who is sort of--
and Margaret Christakos who really put an importance on the music
of language and sort of not always necessarily going for direct meaning
but just for sonorous you know exaltation.
>> Monty Reid: But another thing that's been important
for you is I think is science.
>> Liz Howard: Yes.
>> Monty Reid: I mean you have a science background.
She has a degree with distinction from the University of Toronto
and actually works in a research lab.
>> Liz Howard: Yes.
>> Monty Reid: And I think we're seeing a trend--
trend is too big a word-- but certainly a number of Canadian poets
who are directly involved with science and their work.
I mean I think [inaudible] who is also a scientist--
>> Liz Howard: Yeah, yeah.
>> Monty Reid: -- and people like Christian book and Adam Dickinson
and other folks who are making use
of fairly rigorous science within their work.
How do they fit?
How does the science and the poetry mash together?
>> Liz Howard: In my experience, it's just--
it's been a different well from which to pull to pull language.
>> Monty Reid: Yeah.
>> Liz Howard: And also [inaudible speaker] and also the general theory
of how to work a bit with structure.
One-- I sort of loosely applied a few sort of like theories of memory
and memory formation and memory as being this constructive
and reconstructive and more so of a dynamic process by using a lot
of repetitions and reemergences [phonetic]
of beings and phrases in my work.
So you have the prior experience of reading that and then also
in the present you are re-experiencing it.
So there's this dynamic charged field between present experience
and recollection that both inform each other forward and backwards.
At least that's the intention.
I don't know if that actually happens.
So there's an example and in my studies you know,
you know I've always said you know a student
of English literature might be pulling from Milton or Beowulf
or Shakespeare and sort of my pool from which--
my well from which I draw is you know Kandel's principles
of neuroscience.
That's was sort of like my text so I really love using all
of these neuron anatomical and scientific and medical language.
I just find it aesthetically pleasing.
So that's how it works in my work.
But I think you know-- Adam Dickinson is like--
his work, he has this whole book called "The Polymers" which is all
about plastics and their effect on the environment
and on the human body and so he has all this whole sort
of extended project.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Well and I would add that to that I think poets
and maybe physicists have in common a fascination with pattern, right?
And variation of pattern.
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: And there's actually probably endless overlap
in the kinds of fascinations of physics and poetry.
[inaudible]
>> Liz Howard: And I think yeah,
it's directly influenced how people write,
too as they've been writing these fractured patterns to sort of look
at how modern-- you know like to try
to I don't know match a sense of-- it's interesting.
And that's not just Canadian poetry.
That's across the board.
>> Liz Howard: I'm not sure if it was beforehand but I know
that Christian Book really brought forward the notion
of [inaudible] physics.
This-- which was created by-- was it part of--
was it involved with [inaudible]?
>> Monty Reid: Well--
>> Liz Howard: Is it sort of--
>> Monty Reid: -- I think McCaffrey and bpNichol [inaudible]
>> Liz Howard: Okay.
They were-- okay.
>> Monty Reid: In Canada, anyway.
>> Liz Howard: In Canada.
Okay.
>> Monty Reid: It did not originate in Canada.
>> Liz Howard: No.
No. My-- that's-- that part of my reading
and research is really dusty.
So it's very--
>> Monty Reid: That goes back a ways, too.
>> Liz Howard: Yeah.
>> Audience Member: I was wondering
since this is a capitol poetry exchange, if you might be able
to talk a little bit about Canadian government support
of poets and poetry.
And how different it might be from support here in America [inaudible]
[ Inaudible ]
>> Suzanne Buffam: I can talk about that.
>> Monty Reid: Sure.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Because I've been a beneficiary of both, actually
and I'm immensely grateful and I can say that you know,
the Canadian government is vastly more supportive of the arts in terms
of the way they fund artists, practicing artists.
Not only do practicing artists have healthcare, but they also get access
to a lot of grants that have been totally--
for me essential during early years.
In the United States there is a great--
there are great programs with the NEA that I received a grant
from which enabled me to finish that book and I'm very grateful for.
I wouldn't-- I had to be at a certain place in my career in order
to qualify for that in the first place whereas in Canada,
there are a lot more-- you probably have been given grants
as young writers.
There's a lot more support of that lower level which is really--
has been very essential to cultivating talent
that otherwise can't invest-- you know there's--
I think access here to create a writing program which is a kind
of way that people get that time to write there's a higher--
there's a more privileged category of people who can even just go
to those schools and take out the loans to do graduate study
and then you get access when you're young and--
or you may be get funding
when you're young through and MFA program.
In Canada I think the benefit of the way that funding is structured is
that you don't need to already be privileged enough
to attend a graduate program for higher learning.
You just submit a proposal and some work
and so it levels the playing field socioeconomically I
think considerably.
>> David O'Meara: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: You probably both received funding--
>> David O'Meara: Yeah.
>> Suzanne Buffam: -- early on in your career.
>> David O'Meara: Yeah, at different points in the career and yeah,
your work is being judged by a jury of--
by someone who might have one book or 20 and it's about the work
and you have an equal chance to get a grant to continue the project.
You know Canada is very good at that.
They're not as good, actually, which is why this is great is--
of exporting their culture.
There are things like travel grants if you get invited
to an international festival which I've used a few times
but you know there are I know that I work with Monty with this festival
and when we're bringing in Irish poets
or Scottish poets you know the things like culture island,
creative island where you can apply as a festival and bring
in people from that nationality.
And Canada doesn't quite have this corresponding program is that
and it could do more I think to get our artists whether they are poets
or visual artists, etc. may be
out these different events across the globe.
So-- but it's helpful, for sure.
>> Monty Reid: When we hear that the national endowment for the arts is
on the block, and you just may not survive it comes as a shock to us.
And a real sadness for us because we know many
of the people in the institution who will be affected by that
and for those who are arguing
against that elimination we do wish you all the best.
I know it doesn't amount to much to sit here, but I do know it's--
it will create a great deal of difficulty
for writers in the states.
We have been supported in our visit here by the Canadian embassy
and that's-- although it never seems like there's enough,
the Canadian government has over the years been very faithful
and very good in its support of the arts.
It varies with administration to administration,
but there has always been something there.
And for that we are tremendously grateful.
>> Audience Member: I have a question about that.
[inaudible]
First, I would like to say thank you so much.
I thoroughly enjoyed your readings and the poetry and this discussion.
I would like to know what are you reading now, poetry or prose?
And also you know there's been much talk in the US in past years
about poetry being hijacked by the Academy and I was wondering
if there's pushback against that now but is
that the case [inaudible] is there a perception of that?
>> David O'Meara: What am I reading?
I've got a pile of books because the festival just ended
and I was buying books right left and center.
But currently what I'm probably reading is an Emily Barry book
which is very interesting.
I just finished Natalie Diaz's book.
She's got a new one coming out wonderful American poet.
I'm trying to visualize my desk right now.
I'm blanking on that.
Further. Those are the two that I was just--
I am reading or just finish reading.
And when you say hijacked by the Academy, how do you mean?
Like--
>> Suzanne Buffam: I guess in like all the poetry sort
of sounding the same because it's--
like people coming through these MFA programs?
>> Audience Member: Right.
I think more--
>> Suzanne Buffam: Right.
[ Multiple Speakers ]
[ Inaudible ]
>> Audience Member: --
poetry readings being sort of a job application
in the professors of some MFA programs--
[ Inaudible Speakers ]
>> Suzanne Buffam: I think that's more of the case here from what I--
I mean I can't speak to exactly what is happening in Canada right now
but I think certainly from my-- yes.
I think that is definitely more the case here.
There's far more institutions here.
With large-- you know many with far more money available to pay people
and I do-- you know, I do think that that is partly a product of--
it gives-- you know, the Academy gives young poets a place to hang
out for a couple years and write poems which I think is connected
to Rob's question about funding and how do you stay afloat
when you are young uncredentialed poet looking for you know some kind
of roof over your head if you can get funding
from a university program to spend a couple
of years doing an MFA or a PhD.
It's a place to write your first book and I think
that happens a lot more here for a lot of reasons to do with money.
You know? Yeah.
>> David O'Meara: Yeah.
I mean there's a lot more opportunities to take program--
do programs and MFA's etc. and-- you know, I've taken workshops before
and I've taught them as well.
And I feel that it's good to take them because it forces you to look
at your work on a kind of an editing level and get some feedback
but I also feel like if you do it too often certain programs will sort
of chisel you down to sound like a lot of other stuff and I think
to be successful at taking the most from that is kind
of like getting a bit of it and staying away from it as well
because I think if you're immersed in it then your voice becomes sort
of a collection of a lot of different people's opinions
and you kind of lose that individuality and that can happen
in a program to, I would imagine, you know.
So--
>> Suzanne Buffam: I am a product of programs and I work-- I teach.
So you know I'm immersed in that world but I you know hope
that I also have another foot out of it too
to you know read outside of that.
>> Audience Member: Thank you for reading your poetry--
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> David O'Meara: Yeah, well--
[ Inaudible ]
>> Suzanne Buffam: Are there Canadian poets now
like immigrants whose first language is not English?
>> Audience Member: Which they are not expressing an English?
>> Suzanne Buffam: Uh-huh.
>> Audience Member: They are expressing in their own languages.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yes.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
>> Liz Howard: Oh, there's--
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yes, yes.
>> Liz Howard: -- a Mashabei [phonetic] poet who writes
and an Ojibwe-- Canadian Ojobwe--
poet, Christine Sy [phonetic] who writes both
in [inaudible] in Ojobwe and--
>> Monty Reid: Greg Schofield mixes--
>> Suzanne Buffam: Well and--
>> Liz Howard: Gregory Schofield in [inaudible].
And we have an entire French literature
from Québec and northern Ontario.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yes.
Yeah. And that is very supported and funded as well.
But they often have a separate culture I find, the French-Canadian
and the Anglo Canadian cultures don't have
to my sense enough dialogue across it.
>> Monty Reid: Yeah, there's not enough crossover.
>> Suzanne Buffam: I think that's--
>> David O'Meara: But it's--
>> Monty Reid: [inaudible] fest, for instance is a bilingual Festival.
There are other festivals specifically set
up to encourage emerging writers of people of color, indigenous writers,
people from visible minorities.
There are festivals specifically to encourage that.
[inaudible] reading series
in Toronto is very much directed to that.
So, it's not perfect, certainly--
>> David O'Meara: It's interesting, though,
there's you know there's a lot of immigration Canada and other
than English and French and native languages you don't see a lot
of it being published.
You don't see you know we just had a huge influx of Syrian refuges,
and maybe that will happen over time.
You know as people integrate
and start writing toward their Canadian experience
that will be addressed.
There will be stuff published.
But we really need-- I mean do we have a publisher
who publishes Arabic poetry or you know something outside
of English or [inaudible] yeah.
I don't know.
And that would be a good thing.
You know?
>> Suzanne Buffam: But certainly there are a lot of translators.
And I think that's partly being a bilingual country I think
that is more as second nature in a way to poets--
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Yeah, well--
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Yeah, yeah.
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
Yeah. Well, it will be interesting
to see what Anglophone translators find poets with new ways
of immigration how those things result in a change [inaudible]
>> David O'Meara: You know, there's been a few anthologies--
>> Suzanne Buffam: Yeah, yeah.
>> David O'Meara: -- I'm just thinking-- this Montréal poet.
He did an anthology of Arabic Canadian poetry a few years ago.
>> Suzanne Buffam: Oh, interesting.
>> David O'Meara: A friend of Robbie Hodges.
I can't remember his name.
I only met him once but-- yeah.
There is some stuff like that.
But it's not as widespread as it could be.
Yeah.
>> Rob Casper: Well, on that note I think we'll wrap things up.
Thanks to [inaudible] thanks to Monty Reid thanks
to all of you for coming out.
Like I said there are books in the back over there please go get them.
By them and get them signed by our poets here and we hope
to see you sometime soon.
Our sign-up sheet for events is out in the foyer.
Have a good night.
>> David O'Meara: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Announcer: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
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